Blessing Okagbare found out all about good fortune Friday night, winning the Olympic bronze medal in the long jump after being added to the final when another competitor was kicked out of the competition for doping.

The Nigerian made the most of her second chance, jumping a personal-best 22 feet, 8 inches (6.91 meters). Maurren Higa Maggi of Brazil won gold and Russia’s Tatyana Lebedeva finished with the bronze.

“I’m the happiest woman here today on this track,” Okagbare said.

After failing to advance out of the qualifying round, the 19-year-old figured her shot at a medal was completely wiped out.

But then the International Olympic Committee announced that Lyudmila Blonska of Ukraine tested positive for a steroid, and stripped Blonska of the Olympic heptathlon silver medal she earned last weekend.

Blonska also was removed from the long jump final, paving the way for Blessing’s entrance into the field. Okagbare had finished 13th in qualifying, one spot removed from the final 12.

Blessing vowed to show that she belonged.

“When I came in today, I was sure I would place,” Blessing said. “After the qualification, everyone was disappointed. Today, I knew I had to remove the shade from my eyes and do something.”

Blessing’s bronze-medal leap came on her first attempt of the finals. She couldn’t improve on it, fouling on her last attempt.

That mattered little.

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Nigeria women's 4x100m relay quartet of Franca Idoko, Gloria Kemasuode, Halimat Ismaila, and African sprint champion Oludamola Osayomi this evening at the Beijing's Birds nest stadium snatched a bronze medal in a time of 43.04s.

The Barcelona 1992 bronze medalists only managed to qualified as one of the fastest losers from yesterday's semi-finals due to a near disastrous baton exchange between Gloria Kemasuode and Agnes Ozazuwa on the 3rd leg.

But, today with UTEP Senior Halimat Ismaila running in place of Ozasuwa benefitted from baton disasters by the highly favoured Jamaican and American quartets to pick third.

as am typing this message we're half way thru the 1st half and from what i've seen so far nigeria is not going to win the gold medal

nw its 2 bronze and a silver.

deeteeneey:

nw its 2 bronze and a silver.

For a country of 150 million plus! shameful.

No Nigerian won 1 Silver and 3 Bronze medals. Bronze medals were won in the boxing, long jump and in the women's relay. Of course the silver medal was picked up in football as well. Overall Nigeria finished in 61st place. I was surprised that South Africa only picked up one medal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/medals_table/
Nigeria need to turn things around and invest more and support their athletes more or more and more athletes will go overseas to country like Quatar and Baharin to represent them.