By Favour Elioku
After appearing at every Olympic games since his début at the 1992 Barcelona Games, Segun Toriola has been lauded for being the first athlete from the African continent that will be making his seventh appearance at the 2016 Olympic Games

Toriola Segun

Seven is the number of athlete who have appeared at seven Olympic games the first record holder being a Canadian jumper, Ian Millar,who made ten appearances between  1972 and London 2012. Evergreen performers with seven games to their name is legendary sprinter Merlene Ottey. Meanwhile, this most select club is about to welcome a new member in Nigerian table tennis player Segun Toriola, who booked his place at Rio 2016 in February,” IOC stated.

As published in one of IOC magazine, Toriola was described as a record breaking athlete who is Africa’s most successful table tennis player of all times.

Just like Aruna Quadri put Nigeria on the world map,segun toriola has also inscribed the country’s name on the Olympic Games record as the feat of the most most decorated table tennis player in Africa  being recognised by the international Olympics committee  

It added: “Toriola was only 18 when he made his Olympic debut at Barcelona 1992, teaming up in the doubles with Oluyomi Bankole. The Nigerian pair scored a solitary win in the group phase, over Cuba’s Ruben Arado and Santiago Roque. After further first-round exits in both the singles and the doubles at Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, Toriola reached the third round of the singles at Athens 2004.

It however acknowl-edged the former African champion as one of the best performers at the Olympic Games.

“In Beijing four years later, he produced the best performance of his lengthy Olympic career to date, scoring back-to-back wins over former world No1s David Zhuang of the USA and Belgium’s Jean-Michel Saive, and then taking the Republic of Korea’s Oh Sangeun to a seventh set. Appearing at London 2012 at the age of 37, Toriola went out in the second round to Sweden’s five-time world champion Jörgen Persson.”