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Cairo 2025: Oluwafemiayo on a mission for more glory

The Nigerian powerlifting great returns to the global stage, chasing history in the women’s over 86kg after her record-breaking triumph in Paris 30 Sep 2025
An athlete reacts after a successful lift
Nigeria's Folashade Oluwafemiayo reacts after lifting 167kg in the women’s over 86 category to break the world record at Paris 2024.
ⒸHiroki Nishioka / WPPO
By Filip Ozbolt l For World Para Powerlifting

Nigeria's Folashade Oluwafemiayo is preparing for her fifth World Championships appearance, aiming to win her fifth medal.

The 40-year-old will compete on 16 October in the women’s over 86kg category – the same class in which she won gold at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

The 11th edition of the World Para Powerlifting Championships take place from 9 to 18 October, and for the first time will be hosted in Africa. Cairo will stage the Rookie & Next Gen event from 9 to 10 October before the Elite World Championships run for eight consecutive days.

The long road back to gold

Oluwafemiayo, who took up para powerlifting in 2010, burst onto the scene with a silver medal at the London 2012 Paralympics in the women’s -75kg category – all while pregnant.

Her progress was halted in 2013 when she tested positive for the banned substance furosemide and was suspended for two years. She returned, only to press pause again before the Rio 2016 Games, this time due to pregnancy.

The then 32-year-old came back stronger, winning gold at the Mexico City 2017 World Championships with a world record lift and successfully defending her title two years later at Nur-Sultan 2019.

 

COVID-19 only delayed what seemed inevitable – her first Paralympic gold. At Tokyo 2020 she dominated the women’s up to 86kg, lifting 151kg to finish 12kg clear of China’s Feifei Zheng. By the end of that cycle, she had two world titles and a Paralympic crown to her name.

Defeat that fuelled a new chapter

While many might have eased off, Oluwafemiayo kept building. Just four months after Tokyo she won gold at the Tbilisi 2021 World Para Powerlifting Championships and followed up with another first place at the Cairo 2022 African Open Championships.

 

But in Dubai 2023 came a rare setback. Despite lifting 152kg, she had to settle for bronze behind Zheng and Ukraine’s Nataliia Oliinyk, who produced record-breaking lifts. Zheng broke the world record with 158kg, while Oliinyk secured silver with a European record of 153kg.

That disappointment fuelled change. Switching to the women’s over 86kg just in time for Paris 2024, Oluwafemiayo struck gold again – this time with a world record 167kg lift.

Eyes on Cairo and a fifth medal

That mark still stands. In Cairo, she will attempt to raise it once more, facing the challenge of home favourite Nadia Ali, bronze medallist in Paris.

"Paris 2024 won’t be my last Paralympic Games. I’m still training for more and I’m targeting more world records,” Oluwafemiayo told BBC Sport Africa before Paris.

 

Once dreaming of becoming a nurse, she is now one of the world’s greatest para powerlifters.

“What an able-bodied person can do, I can do too. I want to make Africa proud, Nigeria proud, myself, my family and my federation,” she said.

Now, in Cairo, she will aim to do just that – and write another golden chapter in her remarkable career.

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Folashade Oluwafemiayo

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