Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare said she dreamt she was going to win a medal at the 2008 Olympic Games after initially failing to qualify for the final.

In an interview with BBC, Okagbare, who won silver medal in the long jump at the Beijing Games, said she cried after placing 13th during the preliminaries, with only the first 12 jumpers making the final.

But fate smiled on her after Ukrainian jumper Lyudmyla Blonska was disqualified for testing positive for the anabolic steroid methyltestosterone.

“When I got back to the hotel, I was still crying – I was so depressed,” Okagbare said.

“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.’

“I was the 13th finisher and since they needed 12 and somebody was dropped out, I made the cut. That was God!’’

The 31-year-old was two times lucky at the Olympics, after the initial bronze medal she won was upgraded to silver after the IOC discovered in 2017 that Tatyana Lebedeva had a positive test for turinabol.