Melissa Bishop-Nriagu won Pan Am gold and flirted with the Olympic podium during her prime as Canada’s premiere female 800-metre runner.

A multi-sport athlete in high school, she blossomed as a runner during her time with the University of Windsor Lancers and its legendary coach Dennis Fairhall (WECSHOF 2012 class).

Bishop-Nriagu won multiple gold medals in the 600 and 1,000 metres at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships and just a year after graduation in 2011, she qualified for her first of three Olympic Games.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Bishop-Nriagu narrowly missed a bronze medal, finishing fourth and setting a Canadian national record in the process at 1:57.02. It was strongly suspected that all three runners who finished ahead of her, including gold-medal winner Caster Semenya of South Africa, competed with elevated testosterone levels.

After becoming a mother, Bishop-Nriagu resumed training and qualified for the 2020 Olympics where injury limited her performance.

In addition to the Olympics, Bishop-Nriagu represented Canada three times at the World Athletics Championships (’13, ’15, ’17). At the 2015 World Championships, she made history in becoming the first Canadian female runner to win a medal in the 800 metres with a silver.

In July of that same year, she won gold at the Pan American Games before a raucous Canadian fan base in Toronto.

Bishop-Nriagu was just the third Canadian female to ever run the 800 minutes in under two minutes which she did on a number of occasions. She still holds the record for Athletics Canada with a 1:57.01 run in Monaco at the 2017 World Championships.

Three times during the latter half of the decade she broke her own national record.

Now she’s crossed another finish line as a member of the 2025 athletes’ class for induction into the Windsor/Essex County Sports Hall of Fame.