Ese Brume

Brume entered the national athletics stage during the Nigerian Athletics Championships in 2012, competing alongside then-junior athletes Dakolo Emmanuel and Fabian Edoki. There, she secured a sixth-place finish with a jump exceeding six meters. The 2013 African Junior Athletics Championships witnessed Brume as one of the best competitors. She not only clinched the long jump title but also bagged a silver medal in the triple jump. Moreover, she was an integral member of Nigeria’s victorious 4×100 meters relay team, and she finished fourth in the 100 meters individual event.

Ese Brume emerged as a promising talent in May 2014 when she set a personal record in the 100m sprint with a time of 11.84 seconds. She also established a new African junior record in the long jump at the Warri Relays, with a distance of 6.60m. She leapt a 6.68m jump at the Nigerian Championships which marked her first national victory.

In 2014, Brume made her mark at the Commonwealth Games 2014 as Nigeria’s lone long jump representative. The then 18-year-old won the gold medal by achieving a jump of 6.56m in the finals in Glasgow, Scotland. Due to her accomplishments in the sport, an athletic scholarship for studying in the United States was awarded to her, supported by the local government.

Brume’s performance in the Akure Golden League in June 2016 qualified her for the Rio Olympics 2016. She arrived at the African Championships 2016 in Durban as the continent’s leading long jumper and successfully retained her title with a 6.57m leap. She finished the Rio Olympics 2016 in fifth place, with an impressive 6.81m jump. 

She continued to make waves as in the 2018 World Challenge series, she accomplished a new meeting record and African lead with a 6.82m jump in Kingston, Jamaica. This remained unmatched by any African athlete until the 2018 African Championships in Athletics in Asaba, where she extended her own record by one centimeter, winning her third consecutive African senior title.

Brume made a significant breakthrough at the Turkish championships in Bursa on August 4, surpassing the 7-meter mark twice, a first in her career. Her 7.05m jump ranked her as the second-best African performance in history. On October 6, 2019, Brume added another feather to her cap by securing a bronze medal at the World Athletics Championships 2019 with a 6.91m jump, making it Nigeria’s sole medal at the event and the first since 2013.

At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she clinched a bronze medal in the long jump with a mark of 6.97 m. This was Nigeria’s only athletics medal at the event and the first medal since 2008. In the World Athletics Indoor Championships 2022, she won a silver medal which was Nigeria’s only medal in the competition. She continued her successful streak, winning a silver medal at the World Athletics Championships 2022, making her the first African to win two medals in long jump at the World Athletics Championships. At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, she won the gold in the women’s long jump event and attained the games record with a 7.00m jump.

Ese Brume was born on January 20, 1996, in Ughelli, Delta State, in Nigeria. She went to Delta State University. Her younger brother Godson Okeoghene Brume is also an athlete and smashed the African U18 100-meter record with 10.13 s in 2021.