At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Blessing Okagbare became a superstar in Nigeria thanks to her podium finish in the women's long jump - in a Final for which she had failed to qualify. This is her story.
As a young girl in Sapele, Nigeria, Blessing Okagbare loved basketball so much that it hurt.
But what hurt just as much was that, with women's basketball not being taken very seriously in the country at the time - and certainly not in the part of Delta she was living - there were not enough spaces to play the game.
She was attracted to basketball because of her height, her athleticism, and her great natural ability to jump.
Frustrated, she sought something else with which to test herself. And so she came to track and field.
"It ticked all the boxes," she recalls.
"There were spaces available to compete - as well as a low chances of injuries."
She thrived. So much so, that by the age of 15 she was being talked about as having the potential to represent her country in athletics.
"I heard someone say, ‘I want this girl to represent Nigeria one day, you know, go to the Olympics’ - and I was looking at them like, 'what is that?'’’, she remembers.
Four years later, she not only knew what the Olympics was, she was headed there - at the age of 19 - to Beijing at the 2008 Games.
From Sapele to the world
That Games would make Okagbare, who is nearly 6ft tall (183cm), the most revered Nigerian athlete of the last decade.
But at first, she simply loved living the Olympic life - the buzz of being part of a sporting event like no other on Earth.
"I was just so happy to be there," she says.
"There were lots of people and when you went to the stadium, oh my God! - it was so pretty. It was more like sight-seeing.
"It was my first Olympics and when I won my Olympic medal at 19, I didn’t even know what it meant to be a professional athlete. I just had this enthusiasm as a kid."
Okagbare had been remarkably consistent in the 2008 season, but in the build-up to the main event, her form suddenly deserted her.
In qualification for the Final, she jumped far below her usual standards. Perhaps overawed by the occasion, she could not get above 6.50m.
Only the top 12 jumpers would go through to the final - and Okagbare had finished agonisingly 13th.
"When I got back to the hotel, I was still crying - I was so depressed," she remembers.
"The next night, I had a dream that I was called up to jump and I got a medal. I called my coach and I said, 'coach, you know I had a dream last night - and this was it.'
"He said it was just my imagination. But that evening, as I was mentally and physically tired, I heard the Nigeria team's technical director, Sunday Bada, saying, 'where's Blessing?' I said, 'hello sir', and he said, 'get ready, you’re jumping tomorrow'."
It had turned out that Ukrainian athlete Lyudmyla Blonska, who had qualified for the long jump finals after competing in the heptathlon event and winning a silver medal, had been disqualified after testing positive for the anabolic steroid methyltestosterone.
Given this was Blonska's second doping offence, it would lead to a lifetime ban. But it also gave Okagbare an unexpected lifeline.
Beaming in her white shirt and reflecting on the news, Okagbare could not stop clapping.
"I was the 13th finisher and since they need twelve and somebody was dropped out, I made the cut. That was God!’’
Medal upgrade
Having been given a second chance, Okagbare was determined to seize it as soon as possible.
Right out the gate, she jumped a massive 6.91m in the first round of the Final.
It was not only a personal best, it would turn out to be the third-best jump of anyone that night. Okagbare had won bronze.
She was only behind champion Maurren Higa Maggi of Brazil and long and triple jump star, Tatyana Lebedeva of Russia.
But seven years later the methods used by Russian athletes to achieve Olympic success came under scrutiny. Many of them had been doping their way to medals.
And it turned out that Lebedeva was one of them.
In 2017, the Russian was formally stripped of her silver. Okagbare took her place in the record books - although she is yet to actually receive the physical object.
"I haven’t sat down to like vent or anything," she says.
"Whatever happened, happened. It’s past now. But I got a medal and I got on a podium.
"If I hadn’t gone on the podium, and I was fourth and I got upgraded to third, oh, I would have felt it. But I had my moment, I had the pictures and as this little girl, there was a spot for me, so that was something.’’
Elusive success
Okagabare eventually switched to short sprints, with some of her feats including an African 200m record, a record 100m and 200m Gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, as well as 100m gold at the 2015 IAAF world Relays in the Bahamas.
But she never quite again matched that night in Beijing, where she dreamed of a medal - and then made it happen.
She competed at the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic Games without picking up a medal. As well as physical struggles with injuries, her mental health was impacted by confrontations with the Nigerian athletics authorities over funding and support, as well as online bullying and personal challenges.
"In the last four years, I haven’t achieved 60 to 70% of my goals," she says.
"That's not because I'm not doing the work, that's because I've had so much going on that people have no clue about. It’s just been exhausting completely for me.
"Even at my lows, I’m still representing Nigeria well the best I can. What has actually kept me going was people around meand I still tell people, you need good people. I've been broken, but that part of me to just give up is just not there."
Nigeria has gone 12 years without a track and field medal.
After a solitary podium finish in football at Rio 2016, Okagabare remains the last individual Nigerian athlete to win an Olympic medal. And she maintains that at 31, her best days are not behind her.
"The world - I want them to remember me for something," she says.
"But I just want to supersede what they have right now. And one day, I will."