Nigeria’s first Olympic medalist, Nojim Maiyegun, has passed away at 83. The news was shared by his close confidant, Rudolfine F. Soultan, in a Facebook post late on Monday. “My Jimmy died. I can’t say more about this right now because it’s just horrible. The day after tomorrow, we would have been together for 17 years,” she wrote.

Maiyegun died on Monday morning in Vienna, Austria, where he had been living and had reportedly been battling an undisclosed illness for several months.

At 23, Maiyegun made history by winning Nigeria’s first Olympic boxing medal—a bronze in the light-heavyweight category at the 1964 Tokyo Games. He quickly defeated Great Britain’s William Robinson in just under two minutes in the second round and later beat Denmark’s Tom Bogs in the quarter-finals. Although he lost to France’s Joseph Gonzalez in the semi-finals, Maiyegun and Poland’s Józef Grzesiak both received bronze medals.

In 1966, Maiyegun won another bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. He later moved to Austria in 1971 to pursue a professional boxing career.