Nigeria women's bobsled team qualifies for the country's first Winter Olympics
Nigeria is going to its first Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next year -- thanks to the women's bobsled team.
The African country has never competed in the Winter Olympics, but after the bobsled team qualified this week, Nigeria's green and white flag will be represented at the games.
The three-woman team was elated after qualifying in Canada. To qualify the team had to compete in five races, according to ESPN. The newly formed Bobsled & Skeleton Federation of Nigeria Instagram account was filled excited poses and exclamatory posts.
Driver Seun Adigun, who competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics for track and field, and her teammates Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga, will be heading to South Korea for the February games.
Supporters of the team were pumped as well. There were plenty of references to the 1993 film Cool Runnings, which was about the debut of Jamaica's first Olympic bobsled team in 1988.
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The team raised $75,000 to make the idea of competition even possible. The money raised helped buy equipment, sleds, tools, fees, and other gear.
Adigun had said back in the early days of the crowdfunding campaign, "I was inspired to start the Nigerian Women's Bobsled team in hopes of being the first ever African representative, men or women, to qualify for the Winter Olympic Games in the sport of Bobsled."
She did just that.
Topics Olympics
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
