Blessing Oladoye

Blessing ‘Adidas’ Oladoye, born 9 April 2000, is one of Nigeria’s most promising young Quarter-Milers. In 2016, the younger Oladoye started garnering attention when she came to the Top Sprinter Athletics Championships in Lagos and triumphed in the 400m Youth Girls final, clocking a Personal Best (PB) of 63.85s.

She went back to her base in Ondo State to complete her secondary school education and joined Making of Champions (MoC) Track Club in Lagos in November 2017, relocating from Ondo State, and has been under the tutelage of Olympic medalist Coach Deji Aliu since then.

Oladoye’s first outing as an MoC athlete was at the 2018 National U-20 Champs in Ozoro where she raced to a time of 58.08s, going a step further at the 1st MoC Grand Prix & Relays where she lowered her PB to 57.80s in the heats, before storming to a new PB of 56.42s to win the B Final. She also raced to victory in the 200m B final where she clocked a PB to 24.97s.

Oladoye won the 400m at the Ondo State Trials for the Abuja 2018 National Sports Festival (NSF), where she broke 56s for the first time at the event, narrowly missing a place in the final after placing 4th in the Semi-Finals with a new PB of 55.78s to end her season on a high.

Oladoye’s rise to National limelight was meteoric in 2019, which the young Athlete representing Nigeria internationally on 3 separate occasions. Firstly, she races to a new PB of 55.75s at the National U20 Championships in Ilaro on her way to becoming the National U20 Silver Medallist to make her first Nigerian junior team to the CAA African U20 Championships in Abidjan!

Incredibly, not only did she win 4x400m Bronze at the CAA African U20 Champs in 2019, she went on to place 4th at the National Senior Championships with an incredible new PB of 54.03s, which qualified her for her first Senior team to the African Games in Rabat, where she ran the 3rd leg for Nigeria in claiming 4x400m Gold for the nation! She also competed in the 4x400m for Nigeria at the 2019 World Championships in Doha!

With the way she’s improving, Oladoye is steadily climbing the ladder to gain National recognition just like elder sister, Funke, who represented Nigeria at the 2015 IAAF World Champs in Beijing and 2015 African Games in Congo! When your older sister is an athlete, there is the tendency for it to rub off on you too!

Nicknamed Adidas by her teammates because one day she was kitted in all Adidas apparel, and because of her 3-striped tribal marks, she seems almost destined to one day be sponsored by the global shoe & apparel company on the world stage!