Record-smashing winner of the 2022 World Athletics Championships in 100 metres hurdles, Tobi Amusan, is squeezing out time to tell her story.
The sports great is currently making millions of Nigerians happy and hopeful, while attracting to the embattled country a positive image.
In one of her revelations, she says her dad is still not very comfortable with her being an athlete.
Well, maybe the Sunday’s feat will change the perspective a bit, but Amusan has told the BBC that the disciplinarian man has always been averse to her choice.
He seems to be one of those fathers who want the children to develop in the scholarship/corporate way, without being exposed to vagrant tendencies.
She tells BBC after the World Athletics Championships victory: “Honesty, he still doesn’t support me doing track,” she said.
“He just feels like there’s more to life than running around. Every time I call him when I’m at a competition he just says ‘Okay, do your best, God will help you’ and that’s it.”
According to her, her parents are both teachers.
The mum, however, understands her passion and has always supported her.
She adds, “My parents are both teachers, they are strict disciplinarians,” Amusan told BBC Sport Africa.
“When you grow up in such a family, they feel you should focus on school. And being a female, they think you are going to go astray, lose focus and all of that.
“But because my mum saw what I didn’t see [in] myself, she felt she could give me a chance. And she kept telling me not to disappoint her.
“My mum would tell my dad I was going to church while I sneaked to practice or tell him I was going to a school debate while I went to an out-of-state competition. That’s where it all started.
“My dad got really mad one time when he found out [I was running]. He burnt all my training gear and told my mum that’s the last time he wanted to see me in a stadium.”
Meanwhile, Amusan notes that she started as a football player but was advised to try athletes by the coach who saw something else in her:
“I used to be on the soccer team, but I would be all over the place on the pitch,” Amusan said.
“My coach suggested I go try out on the track team and I became the fastest girl on the team, and that’s how I got on the school relay team.”
