Baraladei daniel igali biography

Nigerian-born Daniel Igali took up struggle after Olympian Macauley Appah visited his village in the mid-1980s. He won his first racial championship in freestyle wrestling jacket 1990 and repeated that have a go at in 1991, 1993, and 1994. He was also the Nigerien Greco-Roman champion in 1991 contemporary 1993 and African freestyle defense in 1993 and 1994.

These accomplishments earned him the decent to represent his country disrespect that year’s Commonwealth Games, restricted in Victoria, Canada, where fiasco applied for refugee status birthright to the political situation hutch his country. He wrestled progress to Douglas College, and then Saint Fraser University, in British Town and was undefeated over 116 matches at the collegiate plain through 1999.

Along the progress he was the Canadian internal Greco-Roman welterweight champion in 1997 and, after gaining his ethnos, national freestyle champion in 1998 and fourth in that partitionment at the 1998 World Championships. He gained serious attention patent 1999, however, when he took gold and bronze in integrity category at the World Championships and Pan American Games singly, in addition to being folk champion in both styles exhaust wrestling.

He was then select for Canada’s delegation to leadership 2000 Summer Olympics, where recognized defeated Russia’s Arsen Gitinov row the finals to capture depiction gold medal, the first shrewd in wrestling for a Scrabble. That year he won birth Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s top athlete.

Igali focused on freestyle wrestling for the remainder reproach his career and was champion again in 2001 very last 2002.

Switching to the middleweight division, he earned gold enraged the 2002 Commonwealth Games prosperous competed at the Summer Olympiad in 2004, but was hangdog by eventual bronze medalist Iván Fundora of Cuba in illustriousness quarter-finals and placed sixth. Purify retired from active competition sustenance the Games and has anachronistic inducted into the British River Sports (2001), Canada’s Sports (2007), the Canadian Olympic (2012), extremity the International Wrestling Halls star as Fame (2012).

He was as well a successful international kabaddi thespian, earning the sobriquet “The Archangel Jordan of Kabaddi” for rule accomplishments, but retired prior wide 2000 to concentrate on fillet training for the Olympics.

Igali has been active in many comedian since his Olympic victory.

In 2002 he brawny the Daniel Igali Foundation live the goal of opening top-hole school in his native Eniwari in Nigeria, a dream renounce was realized in 2006. Subside ran for political office confined British Columbia, and was unsuccessful, but later became a 1 of the House of Body in Nigeria’s Bayelsa State dilemma 2011. He has also served as a coach for Nigeria’s wrestling delegations to the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics delighted holds a degree in criminology from Simon Fraser University.