Makelesi Bulikiobo has been awarded the World Athletics Veteran Pin at the 2025 World Athletics Congress, recognizing her exceptional and long-standing contribution to the sport.
Oceania Athletics says that a former top-ranked athlete in the 2000s, she became the first Fijian and Pacific Islander female track athlete to qualify on merit for two consecutive Olympics which is 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing.
Makelesi also made history as the first Fijian woman to reach the semifinals at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, was a semifinalist at the 2003 World Championships in Paris, and later qualified for the 2009 World Championships in Berlin in both the 200m and 400m.
