Team Nigeria in bad start, as five athletes flop

• Olubodun out in 100m, Abdullahi fails in hurdles, Brume   crashes in long jump
NIGERIA’S quest for medals at the on-going IAAF World Junior Championship in Eugene, Oregon, United States, yesterday began on a bad note.
  The two athletes, who competed in yesterday’s events, failed to make it to the next round. Junior sprinter, Kehinde Olubodun, opened the floodgate of disappointments for Team Nigeria when he flopped in the boy’s 100m. He ran 10.62 seconds to finish sixth in heat 1.
  In the boy’s 110 m hurdles (99.0cm), Bashiru Abdullahi, who was one of the country’s medal’s hopeful in the competition, could not also make it to the next round. The duo went out in the morning session on Day One of the competition.
   The wind of failure for Team Nigeria continued to blow in the afternoon session, as Samson Oghenewegba Nathaniel failed to make it to the next round in the boy’s 400m. He ran 47.77 seconds to finish fourth in heat 6. Another Nigerian, Asekunle Rilwan Fasasi, was disqualified in heat 7 of the same event.
  In the women’s long jump, one of Nigeria’s medal’s hopeful, Ese Brume, failed to qualify. She jumped a disappointing 5.18m to finish last in her group.
  While the Nigerians were harvesting poor results yesterday, Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei fulfilled his role as favourite for the men’s 10,000m. He triumphed over 25 laps of the track at Hayward Field in 28:32.86 to take the first gold medal of the competition. He is the only junior to run faster than 28 minutes this year.
  Cheptegei held off a strong challenge from the Kenyan duo Elvis Cheboi and Nicholas Kosimbei in the final two laps, finishing with final 400m of 59.6, to capture a memorable victory.
  Cheboi came home second after being unable to respond to Cheptegei’s final move with 200 metres to go, crossing the line in 28:35.20, while Kosimbei was third in 28:38.68.
  After four events in the heptathlon, Great Britain’s Morgan Lake leads at the end of the first day with a total of 3821 points. 
  Lake topped the lists in the high jump, in which she jumped a British junior record of 1.94m and the best ever mark by a junior heptathlete, and the shot put to establish her lead.