| Abiodun Oyepitan was born on December 30, 1979. She is a British sprint athlete.
Abi was born in Westminster, London and represents Shaftsbury Barnet Harriers athletics
club. Her first outing to a major athletics came at the 1998 World Junior Athletics
Championships where she finished fourth as part of the British 4 x 100 m relay team. She
continued to perform well at the junior level, but her progress was interrupted in 2000 by
an injury. She managed to bounce back the following year, with her comeback including a
silver medal at the European under-23 Championships.
She was again part of the 4 x 100 m relay squad at the 2001 World Championships. Although
the squad came away empty handed, they set the second fastest time ever by a British squad.
She went on to take gold at the World Student Games that same year.
2002 saw Abi make the final of the Commonwealth Games 100 m and improve on this in the relay
by taking silver behind an Australian team. She also made the final of the European
Athletics Championships where Ekaterini Thanou took the gold.
She continued to improve and in 2003 broke her 200 m personal best in taking her first
national senior title.
2004 saw Abi step up to hold her own with the best in the world. At a meeting in Kalamata,
Greece in May she won the 100 m then beat European Champion Muriel Hurtis in the 200 m.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics Abi was unfortunate in not making the 100 m final. Running in
the faster of the two semi-finals she finished fifth in her heat with a time of 11.18 s that
equalled LaTasha Colander's fourth placed time that saw her through in the second semi.
Despite not making that final, her good form gave her confidence for her preferred event the
200 m where she set a personal best in the first round then comfortably progressed through
round two and the semi-final, finishing second in both to Allyson Felix. She was passed
early on in the final by eventual winner Veronica Campbell and trailed in last but happy
with her overall performance.
Her appearance in the 200 m final was the first women's Olympic sprint final to feature a
Brit since Kathy Cook at the Moscow Olympics twenty-four years previously. She was also the
only Briton to reach the sprint finals, all of the men failing for he first time in
twenty-four years, despite later going on to win the 4x100m relay. |
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