IAAF Worlds Long Jump: Okagbare falls short of entry mark News

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IAAF Worlds Long Jump: Okagbare falls short of entry mark

By Daily Sports on June 16, 2017

Nigeria sprint queen Blessing Okagbare-Ighoteguonor leapt a rather pedestrian 6.48m at the Oslo Diamond League meeting Thursday evening to place seventh in the final classification.

The former African 100m record holder at 10.79 seconds failed to hit the 6.75m qualification standard in the long jump set for August’s 17th IAAF World Championships scheduled for London.

Reigning World and Olympic champion Tianna Bartoleta won the event with her 6.79m fifth round effort while Russian athlete Klishina Darya (6.75) who competed as an Authorised Neutral Athlete and Germany’s Rath Claudia (6.63m) came second and third respectively.

Okagbare opened her bid for the IAAF Worlds ticket with a 6.21m jump before compounding matters with her second jump which was one centimetre below her opening effort.

The Sapele-born sprinter-cum-jumper however raised hopes of a possible huge jump after leaping to 6.40m. She added eight centimetres in the fourth jump to leap 6.48m.

Okagbare failoed to build on her fourth round effort as she jumped 6.25m in the fifth round before fouling the last round to ensure she placed seventh, one step lower than her sixth place (6.52m) finish last month at the Eugene Diamond League.

The University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP) graduate still ranks second in the Nigerian and African 2017 top list behind Ese Brume whose 6.64m jump last month remains the best by an African.

Interestingly, Okagbare was also second (6.73m) behind Brume (6.83m) last season in Africa’s top list of performances.

Okagbare will however be consoled by the fact that she has already raced past the 100m (11.26 seconds) and 200m (23.10 seconds) qualification standards to qualify for the IAAF Worlds in those events. She ran 11.16 seconds in Hengelo, Holland early this week while her 22.87 seconds personal season’s best in the 200m was achieved back in April at a meeting in Lubbock, Texas in the United States of America. (Complete Sports)

Source Daily Sports

Posted June 16, 2017