It really gladdens my heart to have my bronze medal upgraded to a silver medal because it just simply gives me the drive to work even harder and have… - Agnes Osazuwa

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics where I and my fellow team mates (Oludamola Osayomi, Gloria Kemasuode, Franca Idoko and Halimat Ismaila) qualified through to the finals and ended up winning a bronze medal in the women’s 4x100m relay, it was nothing short of an electrifying moment. It was as if the world stood still because all the hard work, discipline and sacrifice just paid off.

I will also like to use this medium to appeal to all my fellow athletes, both young and old, that no matter what you think you are facing now, I want you to just believe in yourself and continually tell yourself that the seeming punishments and disappointments of today if endured will lead to untold glories in the nearest future.

It was with mixed feelings that we got the news of the disqualification of the Russia’s women relay quartet due to a doping infraction by one of her team members. On the one hand we had this joy of becoming Olympic silver medallists, but on the other, a feeling of slight disappointment knowing that the winning quartet had an undue advantage due to one of its members spiking her system with banned substances. This type of revelation comes with a bit of a sad feeling considering the amount of work you honestly put in and believing (erroneously as it turns out) that everyone was competing on a level playing field. And when you now find out that some persons had undue advantage due to the use of banned substances and it deprives you of what should have been rightly yours at the time, it gives you a feeling of sadness and slight depression and disappointment in and towards the system.