Nikki Okwelogu

Women’s Track and Field: Shotput, Nigeria

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For the second straight Olympic games, the Harvard track and field program will field an athlete to represent the Crimson. Four years after Samyr Laine ’06 represented Haiti in the long jump at the 2012 London edition, rising senior Nikki Okwelogu will step up for Nigeria in the shot put.

Okwelogu’s appearance in Rio is a culmination of the success she has had over the past few years in honing her talents.

The Fresno, Calif. native came to Harvard as a highly sought after recruit coming out of Clovis West High School, amassing over 80 offers from collegiate track programs before selecting the Crimson.

It took little time for Okwelogu to make an impact upon joining the Crimson, as the then-freshman took home both the indoor and outdoor Ivy league titles in the shot put while also recording school records in discus and shot put.

The shot putter’s first taste in international competition came the following summer, as Okwelogu elected to represent Nigeria–the country her parents were born in–on the international stage. Okwelogu continue her success by taking home the Nigerian National Championship in the shot put and finishing as runner-up at the African Championships in the same event a few weeks later.

Okwelogu also partook in the Commonwealth Games, competing against a stacked field that included defending Olympic champion Valerie Adams of New Zealand. The prestigious event was the first taste of high-caliber competition the Crimson athlete obtained and provided somewhat of a comparison magnitude-wise to the Olympics.

“It’s literally like an Olympic games, an opening ceremony and fans everywhere,” Okwelogu said in 2014. “I had no idea until I walked into the stadium, and I was supposed to be warming up, but I was just looking around for a solid five minutes.”

Okwelogu’s international experience quickly paid dividends as the then-sophomore took home the Ancient Eight titles in both the discus and shot put, consistently breaking the conference record and named a first team All-American at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the latter.

In her junior year campaign with the Crimson, Okwelogu took home yet another quartet of Ivy League titles and was named first team outdoor All-American and second-team outdoor All-American in the shot put and discus, respectively. Most importantly, however, the shot putter made sure her Olympic dream became achievable.

Okwelogu reached the Olympic qualifying standard at the NCAA Eastern Regional Championships, throwing a personal best mark of 17.91 meters to take home the event title.

The Harvard athlete was named to the Nigerian Olympic team in the shot put after taking home second place at the African Championships with a 17.07 throw; the rising senior also took home the title in discus, throwing a mark of 56.75 meters.

Though Okwelogu has shown success at a variety of levels so far, the shot putter will have her work cut out for her in Rio. In the 2012 London games, the gold medal winning throw by Adams was 20.70 meters, more than two meters longer than Okwelogu’s career best. The rising senior’s all-time best would have been the 17th best mark at the first round of the 2012 Olympics and over half-a-meter short of the top 11 marks that moved on to the event finals.

–Staff writer Julio Fierro can be reached at julio.fierro@thecrimson.com.