By Amaechi Agbo

Ese Brume, born 20 January 1996 in Delta State, South-South Nigeria, is a Nigerian athlete who specialises in the long jump. She is a three-time African senior champion in the long Jump and holds a personal best of 7.05 m (23 ft 1 1⁄2 in)

She is the African junior record holder in the event and also a five-time African junior champion in athletics.

Brume was the long jump gold medallist at the 2013 African Junior Athletics Championships, 2014 Commonwealth Games, 2014 African Senior Athletics Championships and 2015 African Junior Athletics Championships. She also represented Nigeria at the World Junior Championships in Athletics in 2014.

Brume represented Nigeria at the 2016 Olympic Games where she placed 5th in the Long Jump final with a leap of 6.81m

Born in Ughelli, Delta State, Brume first emerged at national level at the 2012 Nigerian Athletics Championships

Brume qualified for the Rio Olympics long jump final as the third best athlete in her pool. This placed her in sixth position going into the final of the event. She eventually ended the competition in fifth place leaping a distance of 6.81 meters which was just 2 centimetres shy of her personal record which she had set earlier in the year.

She became the African Games champion in the Long Jump on 29 August 2019.

This was her first African games title. On 24 July 2019, in Erzurum, she improved her personal best to 6.96m despite a very strong headwind (−2.1m/s). At the Turkish championships in Bursa on 4 August, she broke the 7-meter barrier for the first time in her career surpassing that mark twice in the competition. Her jump of 7.05 m (+ 0.9m/s) ranks as the second-best African performance in history. On 6 October, she won the bronze medal in the World Championships with a jump of 6.91m.

In the build-up to her first Olympic Games appearance in Rio 2016, Ese Brume recorded a PB of 6.83m at the Akure Golden League Meet, won her second National Senior title and followed up with her first African title in Durban.

She then finished a respectable 5th in the women’s Long Jump in Rio with a mark of 6.81m, arguably as the best Nigerian Track and Field athlete at the Games.

However, the Cyprus-based athlete has made huge strides since travelling overseas to further her studies in 2017

She made her Diamond League debut in 2018 and defended her African title in front of a home crowd in Asaba, equalling her PB in the process and becoming the first African athlete (male or female) to defend three successive titles in the Long Jump at the African Championships.

Competing in a handful of meets in 2019, Brume very well in the form of her life, bounded out to a stunning Personal Best (PB) of 7.05m in the women’s Long Jump at the Turkish Championships, moving up to 2nd on the African all-time list.

Her Personal Best is just 7cm behind Chioma Ajunwa’s standing mark (7.12m) and thus, becoming one of three African women to jump 7m or more in the event.

She won the African Games title in Rabat and at the World Athletics Championships, landed a Bronze medal, albeit Nigeria’s only medal at the competition, thus ending a six-year medal drought for the nation.

With her place solidified as one of the best jumpers in the world, Brume will fancy her chances as a strong contender for the GOLD medal at her return to the Olympic Games.

With Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games set to start on Friday, July 23^rd, through Sunday July 8, 2021, expectations are high that Ese Brume would continue to rise.