Gina Mariam qualifies for 100m Olympics semi-finals








Africa’s fastest woman 100m runner, Gina Mariam Bass Bittaye has secured her Paris2024 Olympics semi-final place after finishing 1st position in her heat 7 
race held today,Friday 2nd August 2024 at Stade de France.

The three times Olympian crossed the finish line with a timing of 11:01 seconds. The semi-finals of the women 100m race will take place tomorrow, Saturday 3rd August 2024 at the same venue. 

The sprinter is Gambia's most popular athlete with so many continental honours to her name.

She won the bronze medal in the 200 metres at the 2016 African Championships. Bass qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics and was the Gambian flag bearer. 

At the 2016 Summer Olympics, she placed 52nd in the 200 metres heats and did not qualify for the semifinals. 

She is the first-ever Gambian qualifier for the final at the World Athletics Championships.

The sprint queen currently holds national records in the 100 and 200 metres.

She qualified to represent Gambia at the 2020 Summer Olympics in the women's 100 metre and 200 metre events. In the 100 metres race, she set a new national record of 11.12 seconds. 

Bass comes from Tubakuta, Gambia, southwest of the capital Banjul. She started out early, first at primary school level and then junior high school in Brikama, a larger town near Tubakuta.

Bass made her first appearance at the Games at Rio 2016. At 21, she had broken two Gambian national records and become the first female athlete from the country to qualify for the Olympic Games.

Rio was an eye-opening experience for the young athlete, who ran only in the 200m at the Games and finished with a time of 23.43s, which was slower than the 22.92s she had ran to win bronze at the African Championships in Durban two months prior.

Tokyo 2020 came around in 2021 and Bass was there again, this time with the aim of reaching a step higher than she had done in Rio five years earlier. In Japan, she was ready. She ran 11.16 in the 100m and then 22.68 in the 200m, reaching the semi-finals in both events.

The Olympic Games Paris 2024 is an opportunity for Bass to put her disappointments behind her and focus on reaching the final of both races. Despite winning double gold in Accra, the Olympic Games presents a much bigger test for the Gambian and she has already set her sights on the track in the French capital.

Additional information coiled from Olympics.com

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