Temitope Adeshina has become the first Nigerian woman in history to scale a height of 1.97 meters in high jump, in the final at the 2024 NCAA Championships in Eugene Oregon USA on June 9, 2024.
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 National Collegiate Athletic Association (2024 NCAA Championships) high jump final Temitope Adeshina scaled a personal best, meeting record and national record of 1.97 meters 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 1.97 meters clearance, Adeshina tried to scale a height of 2.00 meters but was not successful in all of her attempts.
In June 2022, she won the silver medal in the 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 400 meters record of 44.86 seconds 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.
