Nigeria’s First-Ever Olympic Medalist, Maiyegun, Dies in Austria

Nigerian boxing legend, Nojim Maiyegun, is dead.

He died aged 83 on Monday in Vienna, Austria, where he had been living for years after leaving the country

The Olympic medallist’s death was confirmed in a Facebook post by his confidante, Rudolfine Soultan.

“My Jimmy died. I can’t say more about this right now because it’s just horrible. The day after tomorrow, we would have been together for 17 years,” Soultan wrote.

Multiple sources also confirmed the development, including some Nigerians based in Austria who knew him.

Maiyegun, who won Nigeria’s first-ever Olympics medal, became visually impaired a few years ago and had reportedly been battling an unnamed illness for months before his death.

It would be recalled that Maiyegun won the bronze medal in the light- middleweight boxing category at the Tokyo 1964 Olympics to break Nigeria’s medal jinx.

Two years later, he won another bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

Maiyegun left Nigeria in 1971 to begin a professional boxing career, fighting 16 times and winning 12, 10 of them by knockout.

He was born on February 17, 1941 in Lagos and he was brought back to the attention of Nigerians in 2012 when his loss of sight was made public.