*Onwuzuruike drawn against champion Noah Lyles, others in 200m s’final 

Duro Ikhazuagbe

NCAA Champion, Nathaniel Ezekiel, made history yesterday becoming the first Nigerian athlete in 38 years to reach the final of the 400m hurdles event of the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo, Japan.

The 22-year-old quarter mile hurdler who in 2022 erased Henry Amike’s over three decades national record with 48.42secs, stormed to 47.47 to win his semifinal race at the Worlds in Tokyo yesterday. The time is however far from his Personal Best of 47.31.

Ezekiel left Qatar’s Ismail Abakar who set a personal best of 47.61 for the second position while USA’s Caleb Dean finished third in 47.85.

In the 400m hurdles final scheduled for Friday afternoon, should Ezekiel win any medal, he will become the first Nigerian, and fifth African, to make it to the podium at the World Championships.

Zambia’s Samuel Matete won gold in 1991 and silver in 1993 and 1995; South African duo Llewellyn Herbert,  won silver in 1997, and L.J. van Zyl, who claimed bronze in 2011; as well as Kenyan Nicholas Bett (now late), who won gold in 2015.

Amike ran 48.63 to place sixth in the event at the second edition of the World Athletics Championships in Rome, Italy, in 1987. He had earlier set a new Nigerian record of 48.50 in the semifinal.

Also yesterday, another Nigerian, Udodi Onwuzuruike, qualified for the semifinal of the men’s 200m event. 

Onwuzuruike clocked 20.27secs in his heat to finish second behind USA’s Kenny Bednarek who hit the finish line in 19.98

However , Onwuzuruike will not find the semifinal easy as he has been drawn to compete with a strong field of some of the best sprinters in the world. 

The Nigerian sprinter will battle USA’s championship defending star, Noah Lyles; Great Britain’s Zharnel Hughes; and two fellow Africans like Zimbabwe’s Tapiwanashe Makarawu and Sinesipho Dambile of South Africa.

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