As the nineteenth edition of the World Athletics Championships starts tomorrow and are scheduled to be held from 19 to 27 August 2023 at the National Athletics Centre, in Budapest Hungary, I am so delighted to now take us back the memory lane to honour few of the Africa’s Golden Queens of track and field athletics, the article is narrowed down to the very elite women athletes from the continent who have won historical gold medals at the two pinnacles of the World Games which are the Summer Olympics and World athletics championships.
World Athletics Championship alongside the Olympic Games represent the highest level championships of senior international outdoor athletics competition for track and field athletics globally, including marathon running and race walking, they are the highest levels of athletes’ career, so it is not always surprising that huge national glamours and celebrations accompany gold medalists in both championships.
Only 29 women from Africa have ever won at least a gold medal at the prestigious world athletics championships since its inauguration in 1983 and Tobi Amusan is the only Nigerian on the list so far and 16 women have so far been Olympics champions in Tracks and fields.
Tobi specialises in the 100 metres hurdles and also competes as a sprinter. She is the current World, Commonwealth and African champion in the 100 m hurdles, as well as the meet record holder in those three competitions.
She stunned the world with two blistering runs at July’s 2022 World Championships. She broke the women’s 100m world record in the semi-finals clocking 12.12 seconds, and two hours later in the final burst out of the blocks for the gold medal in an even faster time of 12.06, although that didn’t count as an official record because it was wind aided.
There are other ‘Golden girls’ that have done the continent of Africa proud at the very highest levels (the World athletics championships and Olympic Games), the list is long but the focus of this article will be on the trailblazers in some of the events for their various countries.
Maria Mutola for instance had an astonishing haul total of 21 gold medals in the Olympics games, World Championships, World indoor championships, African Championships, All African Games and Commonwealth Games, 20 of which were in 800m and 1 in 1,500m set her apart as arguably the greatest female athlete that ever came out of Africa continent.
She is a retired female track and field athlete from Mozambique who specialised in the 800 metres running event. She is only the fourth female track and field athlete to compete at six Olympic Games. She is a three-time world champion in this event and a one-time Olympic champion.
Although Mutola never broke the world record in her favourite event, she is regarded by many track insiders and fans as one of the greatest 800 metres female runners of all time due to her consistently good results in major championships and her exceptional longevity which saw her compete at the highest level for two decades before retiring from athletics in 2008 at the age of 35.
The Tunisian Athletics Queen Habiba Ghribi was a middle- and long-distance runner who specialises in the 3000 metres steeplechase. She won the gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, giving her country its first Olympic medal by a woman.
Hassiba Boulmerka won the 1500 m gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona, It was Algeria’s first gold medal at the Olympic Games.
The first major race she won was the 800m. at the Golden Gala race in Rome, Italy. A month later, she competed at the World Championships. She is the first African woman to win an athletics world title.
The second woman in history to claim back-to-back Olympic titles at the 1500m is Faith Chepngetich Kipyegon, she has won or finished second in every major championships since 2015 (track), and She’s regarded the greatest female 1500 metres runner in history.
She is a Kenyan middle-distance runner specializing in the 1500 metres. A 2016 Rio Olympic and 2020 Tokyo Olympic champion with the Games record at the latter.
The Ethiopian middle and long-distance runner, Genzebe Dibaba was the 1500 metres 2016 Rio Olympics silver medalist, she won a gold medal in this event and a bronze in the 5000 metres at the 2015 World Championships. Genzebe is the current world record holder for the 1500m, and the indoor events of the one mile, 3000m and 5000m. She holds the distinction of possessing the most world records by one woman in track and field history, with her current haul of four, plus two world bests.
The South African Queen Hestrie Cloete achieved her high jump personal best of 2.06 m on 31 August 2003, when winning the gold medal under the World Championships in Paris (African record, as of May 2011).
Chioma Ajunwa-Opara, a Nigerian former track and field athlete and football player, notable for becoming the first Nigerian to win gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal in a field event. A member of the Nigerian Police Force, Ajunwa remains only woman to compete at both the FIFA Women’s World Cup as a footballer and the Olympics as a track and field athlete.
She emerged victorious in the women’s long jump event at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, with a jump length of 7.12 meters (on her first attempt) during the final.
Derartu Tulu is the first Ethiopian woman to win an Olympic gold medal, which she won in the 10,000 m event at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
In 1997 she won the world cross country title for the second time, but did not factor in the 10,000 m World Championships. She won the 10,000 m Olympic gold for the second. She also won the IAAF World Cross Country Championships title for the third time. In 2001, she finally won her world 10,000 track title in Edmonton. This was her third world or Olympic gold medal. She has a total of 6 world and Olympic gold medals.
The Morocco’s golden “girl” Nawal El Moutawakel won the inaugural women’s 400 metres hurdles event at the 1984 Summer Olympics, and was the first Moroccan to become an Olympic medalist (gold).
In 1984 Nawal el-Moutawakel shaved 0.76 seconds from her personal best at the 400m hurdles to beat the favourite. She was the first Moroccan athlete to take gold at the Olympics.
Françoise Mbango Etone is a Cameroonian-born female track and field athlete. She has competed internationally for France since 2010. While competing for Cameroon, Etone was a 2-time Olympic gold medalist in the triple jump at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece and 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. She held the Olympic record for triple jump which she set with a distance of 15.39 m at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The 15.39 m is the third longest women’s triple jump in history under any conditions. Only 25 women have ever jumped 15 metres, Etone jumped beyond 15 metres on 7 of her last 11 attempts in the Olympic final alone.
Etone was also a talented long jumper who finished second at the African Championships in 1999. Etone was the first female athlete representing Cameroon to win medals at the Commonwealth Games, World Championships and Olympic Games.
As Africa’s top female athletes will be descending on the tracks tomorrow in the city of Budapest we curiously remembered that Sprints’ gold medals are still the Holy Grail of the continent up till date despite the huge accomplishments of the continent’s athletes in other events.
No African woman has ever won a gold medal at the sprint (100 and 200-metre specifically) at either the Olympics games or World Athletics Championships, which are the two leading international competitions for elite athletes.
Christine Mboma of Namibia won a silver medal in the 200m at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics at a tender age of 18, becoming the first ever Namibian woman to win a women’s Olympic medal and breaking the world under-20 and African senior record thereby with 21.78 seconds effort, bettering Nigeria’s Mary Onyali’s earlier 22.07 seconds that was run at the Golden League in Zurich in 1996. Hence, Mboma’s effort remains the Africa’s highest honour in women’s sprints till date.
Ivory Coast’s Marie-Josée Ta Lou impresively ran 10.86 seconds to finish fourth in the 100m final at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, missing out on a medal by seven-thousandths of a second (0.007). She then won silver medals in the 100m and 200m at the 2017 World Championships, the latter in the national record time of 22.08 seconds. Despite her 10.72 seconds 100m best making her the African record holder, she still fell short of the ultimate mark.
Will the siege be over by the end of Budapest 2023?
Which of the African Queens that’ll be on parade as from tomorrow morning will break the jinx?.
We are waiting with bated breath!
References:
- Billings, Andrew C. (2008), Sarah Duguid JUNE 9 2012 Financial Times:
- CNN, The Vanguard October 2003:
- Sky Sports, August 2016:
- Smythe, Steve, August 2022:
- Evelyn Watta. August 2022.
