Tokyo Paralympics:  Nigeria’s Ejike, Five Other Athletes To Watch

Team Nigeria Paralympics will participate in four events: Para Powerlifting, Para-Athletics, Para-Table Tennis and Para Rowing.
The first Paralympics debut for team Nigeria was far back Barcelona 1992, with six athletes who came back with three gold medals.
Nigeria largest contingent to the games was in Sydney 2000 with 31 Paralympics Athletes when Team Nigeria returned home with 13 medals.
Here are six athletes hoping to make an impact:
Ejike and 21 other athletes will be representing Nigeria.
Ejike won a medal in each of the Games she has been in, winning gold medals in 2004, 2008 and 2016 and silver medals in 2000 and 2012.
Team Nigeria in the Tokyo 2020 games this year. The Team captain Lucy Ejike, 44, who would be featuring in her sixth Paralympics after making her debut at Sydney 2000, has promised that the contingent would surpass the record at Rio 2016.
Rio 2016 in Brazil, was a successful outing for Team Nigeria, which became Africa best team and 17th overall on the medal table with eight gold, two silver and two bronze medals.
Known as the “Blade Jumper”, three-time Paralympic champion Rehm is aiming to push the boundaries even further after demolishing the T64 long jump world record in June.
The German, who turned 33 on Sunday, leapt 8.62m at the European Championships in Poland — beating the previous record by a full 14cm.
That jump would have been enough to win gold at every Olympics since 1992, and was only 33cm short of Mike Powell’s non-disabled world record.
Rehm has spoken of his desire to compete at the Olympics, but for the moment he is focused on adding more Paralympic gold to his collection in Tokyo.
“I try to be the best long jumper in the world,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter if I wear a prosthetic leg or if I have two sound legs. I just do what I can do, and I just try to be the best I can be.”
Wheelchair fencer Vio is a sporting icon in her native Italy, where she is a regular guest at Milan Fashion Week and has over a million followers on Instagram.
The 24-year-old, known as “Bebe”, started fencing at the age of five, but had both legs and forearms amputated when she contracted meningitis as an 11-year-old.
She turned her attention to wheelchair fencing – becoming the first competitive fencer with no arms or legs – and claimed a gold and a bronze at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
But she has not been able to compete for two years because the pandemic has shut tournaments down, and she has admitted she is “scared” as she prepares to return to Tokyo.
“I don’t know what is going to happen this time, but I’m just so happy to be here,” she said.
“I miss it so much. I miss the vibration of the competition.”