With the COVID-19 pandemic still ravaging the world, crippling sporting activities, Nigeria’s female long jump queen, Ese Brume says there was the need for her to be in good shape.Brume won a bronze medal for Team Nigeria at the last IAAF World Athletics Championship in Doha with a jump of 6.91m, her second-longest career jump after all other Nigerian athletes failed to live up to expectations at the championship. She became the first Nigerian athlete since 2013 to win a medal at the World Athletics Championship. She also made history as the second Nigerian woman to make the podium in the event after Blessing Okagbare leaped a distance of 6.99m to win a silver medal behind the USA’s Brittney Reese (7.01m). Brume is also the third Nigerian after Okagbare and Chioma Ajunwa to make the final of the long jump event.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many athletes indoors, but Brume feels that a good athlete is like a soldier on a battlefront. “I have to find a way to train to be in good shape so that when this COVID-19 pandemic is over, I won’t have a challenge getting to my usual form.”
The Cyprus-based ever-smiling Brume arrived in Nigeria in March with the hope of competing at the Edo 2020 National Sports Festival. The festival was put off on the order of President Muhammadu Buhari three days to its kick off. Since then, Brume has been all alone.
“Sports is what brings food on my table, and I have to find a way to always be in proper shape,” she told The Guardian yesterday in a telephone conversation. “I have designed a training programme for myself here, and everything is going well. I am also very careful with the way I go about my training here, and my prayer is for this COVID-19 to go away as quickly as possible for normal sporting activities to resume. I can’t wait to hit the track once again,” Brume stated.
The Guardian recalls that Brume captured a gold medal for Team Nigeria at the Asaba 2018 African Senior Athletics Championship, before leading her state, Team Delta, to top the medals table at the 19th National Sports Festival in Abuja.
In 2014, she took the entire Commonwealth by surprise when she beat all senior competitors to win the gold medal at Glasgow, Scotland. Brume made Team Nigeria’s contingent to the African Senior Athletics Championships in Marrakech, Morocco, where she also won a gold medal for Team Nigeria.
Brume was Nigeria’s only athlete who made it to the finals in an individual event after all the ‘big names’ fumbled at Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.
