By Uche Amunike
In spite of a heated athletic season, critics and fans alike watched with astonishment, Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan win the Diamond League for the third consecutive time in Oregon, on Sunday.
With a record time of 12.33 seconds, Tobi emerged winner of the fierce contest of 100m hurdles, shocking her critics, especially after her disappointing outing in Budapest.
Her exceptional performance on Sunday wrote her name in history as the second woman to win a hat-trick of 100m hurdles event, after Dawn Nelson-Harper.
Recall that Tobi Amusan set a world record last year, when she won the world title in Oregon.
During the athletics on Sunday, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico came second position in 12.38 seconds, while Keni Harrison from the United States of America took third position in 12.44 seconds. As for Danielle Williams from Jamaica, who dethroned Tobi Amusan in Budapest, she came fourth position in a record time of 12.47 seconds.
As the world watched Tobi Amusan win the Diamond League, it is obvious that what had been a harrowing summer for the 26 year old sprinter, has certainly come to an end as it brings to mind how shattered she was during the preparations of the World Championships in Budapest after having be placed on provisional suspension by the Athletics Integrity Unit for whereabouts failure.
On the eve of the kickoff, she was cleared by a disciplinary tribunal and ended up finishing sixth position in the 100m hurdles final in Budapest, unlike her.
Many people were not sure, at first, if the Athletics Integrity Unit would file an appeal against Tobi Amusan at the Court of Arbitration for Sports. However, they already shifted their focus to the Olympic Games that will take place in Paris next year.
She prepared with a better mindset, instead and coasted home with her third Diamond League trophy. Tobi Amusan has shown considerable consistency in her game. In 2021, she made history after running a 12.42 seconds African record, emerging the first Nigerian to win a Diamond League title.
Some of her critics claimed it was a fluke, yet the following year, they watched Tobi Amusan win the Diamond League a second time when she defended her title, after she ran a new 12.29 Weltklasse meeting record in Zurich, Switzerland.
It was indeed a hat-trick of wins on Sunday as Amusan finished with a best-season time in Eugene, Oregon.
Oluwatobilola Ayomide ‘Tobi’ Amusan was born on April 23, 1997. She attended the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP), USA. In 2015, she won gold in the 100m hurdles at the African Junior Athletics Championships in Addis Ababa, at the age of 18.
In the Tokyo Olympics, she came fourth position in a record time of 12.60 seconds. She was later to compete in the Zurich Diamond League event, where she won in 12.42 seconds, making her the first Nigerian to win a Diamond League trophy.
