By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
Atlanta 1996 Olympics Gold Medallist, Chioma Ajunwa-Opara has landed in Morocco as she joins a collection of Africa’s greatest football players past and present who will grace the 2024 CAF Awards that are to be staged in a glittering ceremony holding at the Palais des Congrès by 7 pm local time today in commercial city of Marrakech.
Prompt News exclusively learned that the recently retired top Police Officer and a professional sportswoman who remains the only woman to compete at both the FIFA Women’s World Cup as a footballer and the Olympics as a Track and Field athlete has been handed a rare privilege of presenting one of the many CAF Awards at the event which will honour the best performing players, coaches and teams this year in Morocco.
Ajunwa-Opara was one of the pioneer players of Nigeria’s senior women’s football team, Super Falcons that represented Africa in the first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup final in China in 1991 before switching to Tracks and Field where she is notable for being the first Nigerian and West African to win Olympic Gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta with a jump length of 7.12 meters (on her first attempt) during the final and the first black African woman to win an Olympic Gold Medal in a field event.
The Olympics champion specialised in the 100m, 200m and Long Jump and competed at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, winning a Bronze Medal in the 4 x 100m Relay, and competed at the African Championships in 1989 and the All Africa Games in 1991 where she also won Gold mMdals in the Long Jump.
Before switching to Tracks and Field, Ajunwa-Opara originally played football for the Nigerian women’s team and was a member of the Super Falcons during the Women’s World Cup in 1991after playing as a forward for the most successful women’s football club in Nigeria Rivers Angels which she helped to win Gold Medal in the National Sports Festival women’s football event held in Lagos in 1990.
Ajunwa-Opara will join an A-list Group invited by CAF to present the CAF Awards including ex-Mali midfielder star Seydou Keita, Mohamed Zidan of Egypt, Victor Wanyama of Kenyan and Double Olympics 800-metres champion Caster Semenya of South Africa.
Others are former South Africa striker Portia Modise, ex-Ghana Black Queens star Alberta Sackey and former Equatorial Guinea forward Genoveva Añonman.
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