“It’s a symbiotic relationship, if you want to put it at that. I need to get my mind off of certain activities that would otherwise take over my life,” she said. “I think people find that crazy because both of these activities are insane alone. But together, it’s like, this is a different beast. I love my life.”
So, as she trained for the Games she also served as one of just eight fellows in UVA’s Designing Democracy Project.
“She reached out at the beginning of her training to ask if she could participate on the project,” said Bertrall Ross, UVA’s Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law. “I was initially a bit skeptical about whether she would be able to commit the time to the project, but she far exceeded my expectations.”
Over the course of the school year, Anumba worked on a report detailing the effects of polarization on democracy in the United States. “Her report offered substantial insights on how media constructs and reinforces polarized views of politics, and provided a starting point for how we might think about mitigating media’s divisive role in our politics,” Ross said.
Let the Games Begin
To date, Anumba’s best overall throw was 61.98 meters at the July 2023 Nigerian Championships. Though she was born in the United States, she’s elected to compete for the sub-Saharan African nation where her parents are from.
The discus throw was one of the events at the ancient Olympics. The metal discus weighs just over 2 pounds in the women’s competition; Anumba’s proving ground is inside a 2.7-yard ring.
