IOC upgrades Okagbare’s bronze to silver

Nigeria’s queen of the tracks, Blessing Okagbare is to be awarded an Olympic silver medal nine years after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The development arose after Russian, Tatyana Lebedeva, was adjudged to have violated anti-doping rules at the 2008 Olympic Games.

Okagbare won a bronze medal in the event for Nigeria. Team Nigeria’s medal tally at the 2008 Olympic Games is now three silver medals. They were won by U-23 Eagles, women’s 4 x100 metres relay team and the women’s long jump. Chika Chukwumerije won bronze medal in taekwondo.

Also on Wednesday Usain Bolt lost one of his nine Olympic gold medals Wednesday when the International Olympic Committee stripped Jamaica of their 4x100m relay win at the 2008 Beijing Games after Nesta Carter was caught doping.

The decision which follows the retesting of hundreds of samples from the Beijing event, means that Bolt, as Carter’s teammate, loses one of the three gold medals he won at that Olympics, AFP reports.

Carter was found to have tested positive for banned substance Methylhexanamine, which was once used in nasal decongestants but now is more commonly found as an ingredient in dietary supplements.

The loss of the relay gold deprives Bolt of one of his ‘triple triples’ – he won gold in the 100m, 200 and the 4x100m at Beijing and then went on to repeat the feat in London in 2012 and again in Rio last year.

The IOC said in a statement that in the case of Carter, 31, re-analysis of his 2008 samples “resulted in a positive test for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine.”