francis obikwelu

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gcolor="silver"\| Silver	2004	Men's 100m

Francis Obirah Obikwelu, born 22 November 1978 in Nigeria and Portuguese citizen since 2001 is a sprint athlete specializing in 100 m. and 200 m., who finished second in the 100 m. at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, the first medal ever in athletics sprinting events for Portugal.

From Nigeria to Portugal

He based himself in Lisbon, Portugal as a 16-year-old, after competing at the 1994 World Junior Championships. After being rejected by both SL Benfica and Sporting Lisbon, we worked for a while as a construction worker in Algarve. He decided to learn Portuguese, and his teacher put him in contact with Belenenses, where he restarted practicing. He then made a decision to run for Portugal. The news was broken in July 2000 by Nigerian sprinter Mercy Nku, who like Obikwelu is based in Lisbon. She said Obikwelu took the decision because of neglect by Nigerian sports officials when he was injured while representing Nigeria in Sydney. "He had to go to Canada to undergo an operation on his knee spending his own money." He became a Portuguese citizen in October 2001. Both his athletics achievements, his life story and his personality made him a popular figure in his adoptive country, where is nicknamed Chico, the short form of the Portuguese version of his first name. He currently competes for Sporting Lisbon.

Athens 2004

In the qualifiers he was one of the most impressive runners, managing two times under 10 seconds (beating the Portuguese record). In the final he recovered from a non-medal position in the second half of the race to reach Silver, just one hundredth of a second behind Justin Gatlin and one hundredth ahead of Maurice Greene, managing to beat the European record set by Linford Christie in 1993. He ended 5th in the 200m final.