- Okagbare places second in 200m behind home-girl, Shericka Jackson
Former
Commonwealth Games long jump champion, Ese Brume, leapt back into
international reckoning on Saturday at the National Stadium in Kingston,
Jamaica where she jumped 6.82m to win the event at the Jamaica
International Invitational Track and Field Meet.
The Nigerian’s jump is a personal Season’s Best, her third best career jump and a new meeting record.
Brume
had been touted as the able successor to compatriot Blessing
Okagbare-Ighoteguonor after jumping 6.56m to win the Commonwealth Games
title in Glasgow, Scotland, 40 long years after Nigeria first triumphed
in the event.
She followed up with an improved 6.81m two years later to place fifth at the Rio Olympics.
That
leap re-affirmed her status as the next queen of the jumps in Nigeria
nay Africa after finishing first in African top list for the year
(6.83m) ahead of South Africa’s Lynique Beneke (6.78m)
and Okagbare-Ighoteguonor (6.73m).
She actually held five of the best 10 jumps by Africans that year.
Brume
however disappeared from reckoning, both locally and internationally in
2017 when she was expected to be the first Nigerian woman long jumper
to make it to the podium in the event at the IAAF flagship event, the
World Championships in London.
Although
she was active in the circuit, jumping a 6.74m personal season’s best
to come second behind Okagbare-Ighoteguonor in the African top list for
the year, she could not replicate the performance of the previous year
when she leapt above 6.80m (6.81 and 6.83m) twice and 6.60m and above
(6.67m) twice.
The
pretty-faced, two-time African champion seems to have rediscovered her
form with her 6.82 performance in Kingston, Jamaica which has catapulted
her to fifth on the world top list for the year.
Meanwhile,
Okagbare-Ighoteguonor (22.66) placed second behind home girl, Shericka
Jackson (22.55) in the women’s 200m with USA’s Francis Phyllis third in
22.76.
The Nigerian tops the world list with the 22.04 African record she ran in Abilene, Texas on March 24 this year.
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