BATON ROUGE, La. – LSU track and field’s Favour Ofili will be representing her home country of Nigeria at the Tokyo Olympics. Ofili, who just wrapped up her first season in an LSU uniform, will be competing in the 200 meters individually, and will also be on Nigeria’s 4×100 meter relay and 4×400 meter relay.
Ofili wrapped up competition at the Nigerian Trials on June 19 as she helped the 4×100 meter relay (42.97) and 4×400 meter relay (3:31.32) register qualifying marks for the Tokyo Olympics. Ofili’s fastest 200 meter race of the season came on May 29 at the NCAA East Preliminaries when she registered a time of 22.30 seconds which was easily below the Olympic standard of 22.80 seconds.
The time of 22.30 ranks No. 14 in the world this calendar year and it made her the fourth fastest U20 athlete in world history over the distance; it was also a U20 African record.
Ofili earned four All-America honors during her debut season at LSU and registered three LSU top 10 marks in the meantime. She won nine races during the 2021 season for LSU and helped the LSU 4×100 meter relay team to a SEC title with a time of 42.52 in mid-May as she ran the second leg for that unit. She closed things out with a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships in the 200 meters (22.45), and helped the 4×100 meter relay place second at the NCAA meet with a time of 42.84.
A budding star in the making, Ofili is just 18 years of age and has already shown tremendous amounts of promise on the track. She represented Nigeria at the 2019 IAAF World Championships when she was only 16 years of age and that made her the youngest athlete to compete at the world championships that year.
(Release via LSU Athletics)
