Around this time last year, Uche Eke was strongly contemplating quitting gymnastics. Prolonged lockdown, heightened uncertainty and an Olympic dream deferred, he found himself trapped in limbo.
By his own admission, Eke “can’t sit still” so the strict home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic was messing with his mind. Looking back now, he is grateful he snapped out of that thought of giving up before it could consume him. “The thought of giving up really pissed me off so I started thinking about how to bounce back,” he says.
FIRST The 23-year-old is set to become the first gymnast to represent Nigeria at an Olympic Games and he is raring to go with the aim of distinguishing himself among the world’s best.
It has been exactly a month since Eke made history at the African Championships in Egypt, where he put in a strong performance to claim the all-around bronze medal that earned him a continental quota spot at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
BACK TO WORK After about a week of basking in the euphoria of his unprecedented achievement, including a quick trip to his fatherland Nigeria where he paid a visit to the country’s Sports Minister Sunday Dare and hung out with some celebrities, Eke is back in the gym in the United States polishing his routines for the biggest stage of his career as an artistic gymnast.
Whenever he is having a rough practice he reminds himself of how far he has come from when he first learnt to do a backflip at age three and why he has to “keep pushing”.
NEW GOAL “I’m on a new goal now,” Eke tells AIPS. I’m thinking about competing at the Olympics. I’m motivated and ready to go. There are some routines I want to do and I have to push and fight to get to that level to do it and the progress I’m making right now is really good.
“My goal is to compete those routines and hit them to my best ability and if I do it how I want and dream it to be, then I’ll be able to make top eight, which is making the final. That’s my goal. Overall, no matter what happens, I want to be at least top 25 in the world,” he adds.
WORLD STAGE Eke’s first appearance on the world stage was at the 49th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany in 2019, where he competed in only three events and got his best rank of 102nd in pommel horse: “I don’t like how that competition went at all,” he reveals, with his sights now firmly fixed on raising the bar in Tokyo.
“Having that feeling, after competing, that I gave all I had performing the best routine I can to the best of my ability, that’s what I’m hoping to do at the Olympics.
“I’m not nervous. I’m excited to just lay it all out, swing as hard as I can, as cautiously and as freely. I have support from Nigeria now, people watching and wanting me to do well, and that’s what I thrive upon.”
DEBUT FOR NIGERIA Born on August 12 in Maryland, USA to a Nigerian father and American mother, Eke began representing his father’s homeland in August 2017 and in five years has become the country’s most decorated gymnast.
In his debut competition wearing the green and white colours, Eke won a gold medal in South Africa, then two years later in Rabat, Morocco, he secured Nigeria’s first African Games gold medal in gymnastics.
TICKET TO TOKYO However, his recent competition in Cairo is, of course, his most memorable. “I pinched myself, ‘am I dreaming?’ I really did it!’” Eke recalls the moment he booked his ticket to Tokyo. “Then I quickly re-watched the video that I made right before, like in the bathroom, saying, ‘this is the day to see if I’m an Olympian or not’.
“I always do like these quick video snippets of just me in a bathroom mirror saying, let’s watch this after and see if I’m happy or sad. So I watched that and I was happy. It was like literally 20 seconds, and then people came up to me and started jumping. I was just super excited.”
FAMILY SUPPORT His father waved at him from the stands and congratulated him verbally a few hours later, after Eke had fulfilled his doping control obligation. “He’s not the type to like scream, my mum probably would have jumped on me or something. But I saw the happiness in his face.”
Then the first video Eke saw on social media after his achievement was from his older brother Daniel. “He was like: ‘That’s my brother. He just made it to the Olympics. We’re going to Tokyo!’” Eke says, adding that Daniel “always believed in me even when I had my doubts”.
Daniel, who had to give up on pursuing a professional career in American football, is one of the reasons the pandemic failed in its attempt to halt Eke’s gymnastics ambitions. “When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, my family from New Orleans came to stay with us in Maryland for several months. Due to the ensuing resource constraints, my brother had to quit football so that I could continue competing in gymnastics. He knew how important the sport was to me, but when he retired from football, he told me I could never quit,” Eke writes on his official website.
The delayed Tokyo 2020 Games is poised to be different from every other Olympics before it, as a result of countless coronavirus restrictions, but Eke wished at least one member of his family could share the spotlight with him in Tokyo.
APPARATUS Among the six men’s artistic gymnastic events; floor, pommel horse, vault, rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar, Eke’s favourites are pommel horse and horizontal bar. “Those are the ones I feel like I have the best chances for individual event finals,” he says.
Eke’s gold medal in Morocco was won in the pommel horse event and he could have secured another gold on horizontal bar if not for the mistake he made. “So I’m just making sure I don’t do that same mistake ever again,” he says.
The parallel bars apparatus is also Eke’s strong point. He won a bronze medal in the event at the African Games in 2019. However, he is also training hard for the other three events so he could also take a shot at reaching the men’s individual all-around final. The men’s qualification at Tokyo 2020 is scheduled for July 24, a day after the opening ceremony, at the Ariake Gymnastic Centre.
AN OLYMPIC MEDAL When asked what winning a medal at the Games would mean for him, Eke replies: “I’m speechless. I imagine it, you know. It would be like ‘wow! I put my whole life towards this and I did it. If I get a gold medal I’m coming straight back to Nigeria with it, and I’ll say we are building a gym now.
Eke has repeatedly pledged his commitment to the development of gymnastics in Nigeria and he hopes that having proven himself to the point of being among the best on the continent, he can be an inspiration to the country’s younger generation of gymnasts while also attracting investments to the sport. “I want to get into branding, I want to find some sponsorships. I want to help excel gymnastics not just for myself but for everyone,” he says.
SPONSORSHIP Tokyo 2020 will mark a new phase for Eke, who has largely depended on his parents’ finance to push his gymnastics career this far. As a student-athlete at the University of Michigan, Eke distinguished himself at both undergraduate and graduate levels. And this year he earned a Master of Science degree in information, with concentration in software engineering and programme management after maintaining a 4.0 GPA to add to his bachelor’s degree in computer science.
“I’m going to get a job and figure out how I’m going to fund myself, that’s where I’m at now. There’s no more support from school, it’s all me. And I’m not going to expect my parents to give me anything anymore.”
DOING THINGS While hoping that brands will see the value in him and his sport, Eke is not planning to just sit still and wait. “I’ll find another way,” he says. “I like doing activities. I tried modeling a little bit, they said I’m 5’10”, I’m too short. Nah, I’m going to find my way to model somehow still. I like doing all types of things. I like doing everything media related. It’s fun and what’s the point of life if you’re not having fun.”
In his free time, he enjoys skateboarding, socializing, and investing in crypto currencies.
FUTURE Eke is looking to participate in the 50th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships and then the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham before considering retirement, depending on his funding situation. Although some friends are urging him to also aim for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
In the meantime, his message for parents, especially, is to support their kids who want to do sport and take them seriously. Eke’s mum saw her four-year old land on his head severally while doing backflips and decided it was best put him in gymnastics “so that my energy could be released in a safer way,” Eke says on his website. Today, he is a history maker and role model.
