Former NFL star wins bronze medal for Team GB at European Athletics Championship
dailystar.co.ukNFL star Lawrence Okoye won bronze for Team GB at the European Championships in the discus and the 30-year-old has one eye on medalling at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.Okoye competed in the 2012 London Olympics, but finished a disappointing 12th and decided to pursue an NFL career the following year despite never having played the sport at school or in university.He ended up being signed by the San Francisco 49ers as a defensive lineman and had a journeyman career, also spending time with the Arizona Cardinals, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bears and Miami Dolphins. READ MORE: NFL's Deshaun Watson fined £4.2m and banned for 11 games after sex attack claims Okoye returned to the discus in 2019 at the Anniversary Games and is now enjoying an excellent year, having won a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and now a bronze at the European Championships in Munich.In winning bronze, Okoye became the first British man to ever win a discus medal at the European Championships and the feat saw him reduced to tears. "It's been a tough year for me in a lot of ways and to do what I did today just meant the world to me," Okoye told BBC Sport. "It's not really something I can describe. "To medal in this field after some of the things I've been experiencing just means the world to me, I couldn't really hold it back.
I think the Commonwealths showed me whats possible and it opened my eyes to a whole new world."Being on that podium... there's no feeling like it and I just wanted to get back there again.
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