Team Nigeria’s Chierika Ukogu completed her record-breaking performance in Rio, after becoming the first Nigerian woman in history to qualify for the semi-finals of the women’s Single sculls rowing event at the Olympics.
Ukogu competed in quarter-final 3, to finish 5th in 7:54.44, with the race winner being Denmark’s Fie Udby Erichsen, who clocked 7:33.22, with Zimbabwe’s Micheen Thornycroft finishing runner-up in 7:34.38 while Canada’s Carling Zeeman was 3rd in 7:34.52.
A breakdown of how Ukogu rowed: in the first 500m she clocked 1:52.57 and then went on to 3:51.77 in 1000m, in the next 1500m her time was 5:52.26 which culminated in the 7:54.44 she posted. Although only the top three in each Heat automatically qualified to semifinals A/B, Ukogu’s time was ranked 18 overall in the quarterfinals, which was enough to book a spot in Semifinal C/D 1.
The US-born athlete will hope to get a berth Final A with a much faster time, when she competes tomorrow by 3:30pm (Nigerian Time).
Meanwhile, there are 24 semifianlists for today and they will run in a group of six semifinals. Ukogu will run in lane two beside Aisyah Saiyidah from Singapore who will run in lane 1.
In lane three is Kim Ye-Ji from South Korea, Anna Malvina Svennung of Sweden in lane 4, Lina Saltyte of Lithuania in lane 5 and Algeria’s Amina Roube of Algeria in lane in six.