Story submitted by Tony Neeley, University of Kentucky Assistant AD / Media Relations
Simidele Adeagbo was named a First Team CoSIDA Academic All-America® in women's track/cross country in 2003. Adeagbo was a four-time NCAA All-American and triple jumper record holder for the University of Kentucky, where she majored in journalism. Her last track and field competition was in June of 2008. Now 10 years later, she'll make her Olympic dream come true in PyeongChang.
Read More
•
NBC Sports: Simidele Adeagbo
•
Nigeria’s Simidele Adeagbo becomes Africa’s First Female Skeleton Athlete to Compete in the Winter Olympics (BellaNaija.com)
•
Simidele set to make history for Nigeria at the Winter Olympics (Vanguard)
•
Another Nigerian athlete qualifies for Winter Olympics (pulse.ng)
•
2003 CoSIDA Academic All-America® Women's Track & Field/Cross Country Teams
UKTF Alumna Simidele Adeagbo to Compete at Winter Olympics
All-America triple jumper to represent Nigeria in Skeleton
by
UKAthletics.com
Kentucky track and field alumna Simidele Adeagbo qualified to represent Nigeria in the skeleton at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeonChang, South Korea next month.
The games will take place Feb. 9-25. The women’s singles skeleton competition is scheduled for Feb. 16-17 at the Alpensia Sliding Centre outside PyeonChang. The networks of NBC have the U.S. broadcast rights.
A 2003 Kentucky track and field graduate, Adeagbo was a four time All-American and remains the outdoor school record holder in the triple jump (44’0.5”/13.42 meters). She was also an Academic All-American and Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar to but a few off-track accomplishments. She was an NCAA and Southeastern Conference scorer and was a two-time U.S. Olympic Trials finalist in the triple jump, narrowly missing a spot on the 2008 Olympic Team.
Earlier this month, Adeagbo booked her spot as the first African woman to compete in Skeleton at the Olympics via a qualifying race in Lake Placid, New York.
Adeagbo, who was born in Toronto to Nigerian parents and lived in Nigeria from when she was an infant to 6 years old first touched a skeleton sled in September 2017. The details of her journey from Kentucky All-America track and field athlete to the Olympic sliding center are detailed in the following linked nike.com news article.
Skeleton is a single rider winter sport in which an athlete rides a skeleton sled face down a frozen track at high speeds. Per her personal Website, when she’s not sliding down ice tracks, she’s a creative force, visionary, business leader, world traveler and Africa Aficionado.
“Ultimately, for me, this is about breaking barriers in winter sports,” Adeagbo told nike.com earlier this month. “It’s about making history. And leaving a legacy. It's about moving sport forward. That's so much bigger than just me being an Olympian.”
For over a decade, while pursuing her athletic endeavors, Adeagbo has also led a successful and notable career at Nike Inc., where she is currently a Marketing Manager in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Simi represents what the power of sport can do to move the world forward, and for me, one of the best parts of her journey is getting the opportunity to create and innovate for not only an employee, but a friend,” Nike footwear product line manager, Tobie Hatfield, a senior director of athlete innovation who’s designing Adeagbo’s skeleton spikes, told nike.com.
From BellaNaija.com
Nigerian athletes are not playing with anybody!
Another Nigerian athlete Simidele Adeagbo will be the first African woman to compete in the Skeleton category of the Winter Olympics.
Adeagbo, who will be joining the historic Nigerian bobsled team, qualified after coming 3rd in her 5th qualifying race.
36-year-old Adeagbo is currently ranked 84th in the world, although she first time she ever touched a skeleton sled was in September 2017.
She is a 4-time NCAA All American and triple jump record holder for the University of Kentucky, and had nursed but ultimately dumped an ambition to of competing at the Olympics, hanging her boots in 2008.
Her ambition had been revived in 2016, after hearing about a Nigerian bobsled team planning on competing in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea.
She told ThisDay:
I read an article about how the women had this audacious goal of becoming Africa’s first-ever bobsled team to go to the Winter Olympics. I was super inspired, and instantly thought, I wonder if I could be a part of that?
So, when I saw that, I was thinking, maybe they need a fourth person and maybe that fourth person could be me because there’s a history of track and field athletes going into bobsled.
But after she inquired from the team if she could be the fourth member, she heard back from them saying while bobsled is a 4-person sport for men, it is a 2-person sport for women.
In 2017, another opportunity surfaced. She saw on Instagram a call for tryouts by the Nigerian Bobsled and Skeleton Federation in Houston, Texas.
She had packed her bags and traveled to Houston, arriving on the morning of the tryouts and competing in the evening.
She got a call from the federation weeks later, she said, asking her to show up in camp in Canada. She said:
I honestly didn’t know much about the sport, but knew that there was a lot that I could draw from my track and field background to help me succeed in it. You run as fast as you can for about 30 meters to gain momentum before you launch into or onto something.
I was able to pick up the push start very, very quickly because I already had that experience with the runway of triple jump. Where I really have the advantage is only for a very short amount of time, four or five seconds of the race. But the track is a mile long, so the race will last another 50 seconds.
Adeagbo on her Instagram shared the great news that she had qualified for the winter Olympics, writing:
Hello Pyeongchang! I successfully completed my 5th qualifying race with a 3rd place finish! I’m looking forward to representing @bsfnigeria & becoming the first female African Skeleton athlete to compete in the Winter Olympics. Dreams do come true!
Yoruba: ??Were loba mi se (2X)
Ohun ti mo ro wipe ko seese Were loba mi se ??
English Translation: He did it effortlessly for me (2X)
What I thought was impossible
He did it effortlessly for me
THANK YOU JESUS for this amazing blessing & plan for my life! ????#historyinthemaking#breakingbarriers#watchmework ??@candicewardphotography
Simidele Adeagbo also shared a video detailing her race, captioning it: “What an epic day! ??????????????”
See her posts below:
Photo Credit: simisleighs