My journey into the high jump started with the Baba Ijebu Inter-School Athletics Championships around 2014 and 2015. I made it from the inter-school level to the district level, where I was second behind Esther Isa. That was also where and when my coach, Kola Adebayo, discovered us. He said we were tall and asked if we were interested in training with his athletes. He gave us his number then, but unfortunately, I lost my phone and couldn’t reach him. After the competition, everyone went back to their schools, and I began to go to the stadium. I schooled in Badagry, Lagos State, so I only went to the stadium on weekends. I was training in the evening, and unknown to me, coach Kola Adebayo was training in the morning. In the absence of coach Kola, I met coach Adu, Ruth Usoro’s coach, and started sprint training with him. However, I was a bit lazy in that, and he told me he was going to introduce me to a high jump coach who turned out to be coach Kola. That was how I reconnected with coach Kola, and I began to train specifically in the high jump. From there, I went to more school competitions, and gradually, I started competing at meets and national events in Nigeria.
The Olympics have come and gone. What’s the greatest lesson you learnt from your first outing at that level?
The Olympics have taught me not to wait for anybody. You just have to do what you need to do because eventually, nobody celebrates failure. If you win, that is when you will be celebrated. Nobody wants to roll with a loser. That’s the greatest lesson I got from the Olympics, even though the will to merely make it there is what most of us take as solace. But for me, it’s one thing to be an Olympian; it is another thing to be an Olympic medallist. So, we go again next time in LA 2028.
What was on your mind when you stepped out to compete?
When I first stepped onto the purple track inside the Stade de France, I was like, ‘Wow, this is a dream come true.’ Of course, there are still many other dreams, but that was special. From the time that I qualified, throughout my camping and eventual journey to Paris, I had nursed the feeling of becoming an Olympian, and I felt it the moment I stepped out to compete.
