| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Adama Njie | ||||||||||||||
| Born | 7 February 1978 The Gambia | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 163 cm (5 ft 4 in)[1] | ||||||||||||||
| Weight | 50 kg (110 lb)[1] | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Adama Njie (or N'Jie; born 7 February 1978) is a retired Gambian middle-distance runner who specialised in the 800 metres. She represented her country in three Olympic Games and one Commonwealth Games, and was the flag-bearer for the Gambia at the 2000 Summer Olympics.
At the 1996 African Championships in Athletics, aged 18, Njie won a bronze medal in the women's 800 metres (with a time of 2:10.10). She was the first Gambian runner to win a medal at the championships for an individual performance, as the country's only other medal had come in the 4 × 100 metres relay (at the 1984 event).[2] A few weeks after her medal at the African Championships, Njie was a member of the nine-athlete Gambian delegation at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, as the only female competitor for her country.[3] Her only race was the 800 metres, where she failed to finish the race. She was the third-youngest runner in the event, after Ethiopia's Kutre Dulecha and Yaznee Nasheeda of the Maldives.[4]
Running in the 800 metres at the 1997 World Championships in Athletics, Njie placed last in her heat and finished 31st in a field of 36 runners.[5] She fared better in the 800 metres at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, placing 17th in a field of 25 runners where the top 16 qualified for the semi-finals.[6] For the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Njie was one of only two Gambian athletes (along with Pa Mamadou Gai, and became the country's first female flag-bearer.[7] She again ran the 800 metres, and finished second-last in her heat with a time of 2:07.90, which placed her 31st out of 37 runners overall.[8]
In the 800 metres at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics, Njie ran the slowest time in her heat and the fourth-slowest overall.[9] She did improve at the 2003 World Championships, finishing over nine seconds slower than she had two years previous.[10] At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Njie was again the only woman in the Gambian delegation.[11] She was only invited to compete a month before the games were due to start, as another Gambian athlete, Mama Gassama, had been withdrawn.[12][13] Njie placed last in her heat with a time of 2:10.02, more than ten seconds behind the heat winner, Maria Cioncan of Romania.[14] However, she became the first Gambian woman to participate in three Olympic Games, with sprinter Jabou Jawo being the only other Gambian woman to have previously participated in multiple editions.[15]
