HOUSTON – From Houston to the world stage, Seun Adigun has built a career defined by resilience, reinvention and historic firsts.
The Nigerian-American athlete and chiropractor made Olympic history first on ice as the driving force behind Nigeria’s first-ever Olympic bobsled team. In doing so, she became the first and currently only African athlete to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
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Adigun grew up in Chicago playing nearly every sport she could find basketball, flag football, tennis and track.
“I just wanted to be great. I wanted to be great at everything,” she said.
Basketball was her first love. “I was a basketball player. I wanted to go to the NBA,” she recalled with a laugh.
But it was on the track that she found her stride.
“A lot of people don’t realize that my story is one of the true underdog,” Adigun said.
She didn’t arrive in college expecting Olympic glory. In fact, when she first stepped onto campus at the University of Houston, the Olympics weren’t even on her radar.
At Houston, she became a standout hurdler and embraced life as a UH Cougar.
During an NCAA meet, Adigun suffered a heart episode on the track and was carted off on a stretcher, a scary first in her career. The health scare forced her to confront the possibility that her athletic journey might be over.
But her coach saw something she couldn’t.
“I think we got robbed of our opportunity to really reach your potential,” she recalls her coach telling her. “I think you have what it takes to run at the next level.”
Adigun had an offer to attend graduate school in Tennessee. Instead, she stayed in Houston, working as an assistant coach while earning her graduate degree and training relentlessly.
“I’m gonna give this thing three years, and I’m gonna throw everything I have in the tank at it to prove to myself I can compete with the best in the world,” she said.
The gamble paid off.
London 2012 And Heartbreak
Adigun qualified to compete for Nigeria at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, fulfilling a dream she once thought impossible. Representing Nigeria held deep meaning for her as a Nigerian-American.
“It was the first time in my life that I had seen what patriotism brings to people,” she said. “I’m American. I’m raised here in the U.S. But I’m Nigerian-American. What have I done to contribute to the Nigerian side of who I am?”
Competing at the highest level despite her health challenges felt like a triumph in itself.
“It was like I’m able to compete at the highest level despite everything that I’ve been through with my health,” she said.
But the games ended in heartbreak. A stress fracture in her left leg prevented her from advancing past the first round. After her race, she faced a long walk from the track to the training area physically and emotionally drained.
Her coach met her with open arms.
“He reached his hands out and gave me the biggest hug. I just melted,” she said. “In that moment, that chapter had closed.”
Or so she thought.
From Track to Ice
Three years later, Adigun found herself chasing a new Olympic dream, this time on ice.
Encouraged by coaches in the sport of bobsled, she saw an opportunity bigger than herself. The sport needed more women’s teams. No African nation had ever competed in Olympic bobsled.
“It was actually the coaches and the sport itself that were encouraging me,” she said. “They were like, ‘You’ve been to an Olympic Games already. You understand what needs to happen.’”
There was just one problem: Nigeria had no bobsled federation, no team, no snow and no sled.
So, Adigun built it all.
“I had to create a federation, create a team, become a driver, learn to drive, get brakeman and then learn how to navigate the tracks in less than 18 months,” she said.
She recruited former track athletes as teammates. With no access to ice, she built her own wooden training sled, naming it after her late sister, and practiced pushing it on pavement on UH’s track. She received support from the U.S. federation and the international governing body, but much of the heavy lifting was her own.
When she told people she was starting a bobsled team for Nigeria, she said, “everybody laughed.”
“Sometimes I didn’t even believe it was gonna happen,” she admitted.
PyeongChang 2018: A Historic First
In 2018, the impossible became reality at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
Nigeria became the first African nation to compete in Olympic bobsled. Though the team finished last, their presence alone reshaped the sport’s history and expanded its reach.
“Making it to the 2018 Games, it was a journey that can’t be described in one word, one sentence, one paragraph,” Adigun said. “It was so legendary on so many levels.”
For her, it was about representation.
“The country, the continent, and honestly Black people around the world needed representation in a sport that had already been around for almost 100 years,” she said.
The comparisons to the movie Cool Runnings, about Jamaica’s unlikely bobsled team, didn’t bother her.
“Being compared to something as legendary as Cool Runnings was actually a compliment,” she said.
A Legacy Still Growing
Adigun later served as Nigeria’s team doctor at the 2022 Winter Games, continuing to contribute to the Olympic movement in a new role.
Today, she carries her dual-Olympian distinction proudly.
“I walk around with that title pretty proudly,” she said, “as the first and currently the only African to compete in both Summer and Winter Olympics.”
Her message to young dreamers is simple: “just because Nigeria doesn’t have snow doesn’t mean that we can’t do a snow sport. You have to think big. Don’t be afraid to dream. Don’t be afraid to aspire.”