Adeshina sets new Nigeria high jump record, qualify for Olympics

Temitope Adeshina became the Nigerian woman in history to scale a height of 1.97m in high jump, following her impressive performance in the final at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championships in Eugene Oregon USA on Sunday.

Her feat meet the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying standard and also she will be the first athlete to represent Nigeria in the high jump event at the Olympics, since Doreen Amata at Rio 2016.

The 25-year-old now holds the high jump indoor and outdoor national records previously held by Amata.

At the NCAA high jump final Adeshina scaled a personal best, meeting record and national record of 1.97m on her last attempt to rank third based on countbacks. She finished behind Rose Yeboah and Elena Kulichenko who tied for first place.

After going past the 1.97m clearance, Adeshina tried to scale a height of 2.00m but wasn’t successful in all of her attempts.

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In June 2022, she won the silver medal in tne high jump at the 2022 African Athletics Championships in St Pierre, Mauritius.

She won the Nigerian championship high jump title in 2022 and retained her Nigerian championship title in 2023.

She joined Texas Tech University in 2023, and competing indoors in early 2024 jumped a personal best and national record height of 1.96 metres in Texas.

Meanwhile, Samuel Ogazi delivered the performance of his career at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, storming to a massive personal best to clinch Silver with a time of 44.52 seconds.

The University of Alabama freshman who only got to the US six months ago had only most of the indoor season to settle into the new system.

He had himself a couple of races indoors to get warmed in but took the bull by the horn outdoors, setting multiple School Records to earn himself a spot in the 400m final.

One of such records is the 400m record of 44.86s held by the legendary Kirani James since 2011.

Qualifying at the top of his heat in Eugene, he was drawn in lane five where he came up against his arch-rival, Christopher Morales-Williams of the University of Georgia.

The Canadian athlete went out hard in his usual rocking style and at half-way, Ogazi seemed to have difficulties to surmount to close the gap and enter the conversation for the win.

He eventually launched a counter-attack, running a masterful top bend to level up with the rest of the competition. With 50 metres to go, he caught Florida’s Jevaughn Powell, inching ahead of him at the finish to claim Silver.