{"id":19340,"date":"2024-08-27T06:34:55","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T06:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=19340"},"modified":"2024-08-27T06:34:55","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T06:34:55","slug":"nigerias-first-olympics-medalist-nojim-maiyegun-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=19340","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria\u2019s first Olympics medalist, Nojim Maiyegun, dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Nigeria\u2019s first-ever Olympics medalist, Nojim Maiyegun, has been reported dead at 84.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This was disclosed late Monday by an Austria-based acquaintance of the deceased identified as Rudolfine Soultan (Funmilayo) on her Facebook post.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The post read, \u201cMy Jimylein (Jimmy) is dead. I can\u2019t say more about this right now because it\u2019s just horrible. By the day after tomorrow, we would have been together for 17 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In a check by our correspondent, on August 29, 2023, Maiyegun, popularly known by the monikers \u2014 Jimmy, Market Boxer and Omo Oloja; wrote in a Facebook post, with a picture of himself and Soultan, \u201c16 years together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Soultan, on July 14, 2024, made another post on her Facebook wall, depicting the health status of the deceased.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It read, \u201cHappy birthday, dear Amin. Unfortunately, we celebrate without Jimmy and not much, because he was admitted to the hospital again today. I always go with the rescue and stay with him for a few more hours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Born February 17, 1941, in Lagos State, Maiyegun <a href=\"https:\/\/punchng.com\/nigerias-olympic-heroes-and-sheroes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">became<\/a> Nigeria\u2019s first-ever Olympic medalist after winning bronze in the men\u2019s light middleweight (71kg) category at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He also won a bronze medal at the 1966 Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica among several other laurels he won while representing Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He relocated to Austria in 1971 to continue his professional boxing career. However, he had a short professional career between 1971 and 1973 with only 16 bouts, winning 12 including 10 knockouts and four defeats as well. In 2012, he revealed that he had lost his sight.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nigeria\u2019s first-ever Olympics medalist, Nojim Maiyegun, has been reported dead at 84.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19342,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19340\/revisions\/19342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}