Nigerian female tennis player, Offiom Edem gave the country something to cheer on a day several of the nation’s competitors were sent crashing in various events, megasportsarena.com reports.
While evergreen ping-pong veteran, Funke Oshonaike lost in the women’s singles and Olajide Omotayo failed to progress in the male category, Edem secured a place in the second round with victory over Hungary’s Dora Madarasz.
Edem surged into the next stage of the women’s singles with an emphatic performance that gave her the first three sets (11-8, 11-9, 11-9).
Although the Hungarian fought back to take the fourth, the Calabar-born Edem was able to seal the match in the fifth set and book a face-off with Zhang Lily of USA in the next round.
He story was different from that of 26-year-old Olajide, who lost four straight sets to Portugal’s Apolonia Tiago in the first round of table tennis men’s singles, while the duo of Olofua Godwin and Anuoluwapo Juwon Opeyori lost their opening games in badminton men’s doubles.
Featuring in Group B, Olofua and Opeyori were beaten 2-0 (21-2 21-13) by Japan’s Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanabe, while Uche Eke also fell short on the day he became the first gymnast to represent Nigeria at the Olympics.
Eke’s dream was cut short as he finished 58th overall in the men’s all-round artistic gymnastics event with a total score of 74.765, while Esther Toko crashed out in the rowing event, as she finished fifth in the women’s single repechage 2, clocking 9:07.54.
The surge of defeats for Nigeria, however, ended with Edem’s victory, which was a huge turnaround on both collective and personal levels for the determined lady, who admitted some months back that she almost called it quit when things started going bad for her.
The 34-year-old star, who won bronze at the 2018 ITTF Africa Top 16 and 2018 ITTF Africa Senior Championships, has featured in the All Africa Games since 2007, but she almost quit when she was dumped by her boyfriend.
Edem recounted: I started table tennis when I was in primary school in Cross River State – along with Cecilia Akpan. Then there were several competitions for us to attend and we got exposed.
“I got into the national junior team and we attended a lot of competitions which helped us become better.
“My toughest moment was at the All African Games in 2007 in Algeria. It was when I had a problem with my then boyfriend and it affected me badly for more than a year.
“I almost quit the sport that year. I was disturbed and could not focus on my game. I lost a lot of important matches. I was distracted and I was just tired of playing table tennis.
“It was a really tough time for me and it was not easy because it affected me badly. Worse still, everybody noticed but I couldn’t just share it with anybody.”
