CAA U18/U20 Championship: Nigerian Wins Long Jump Gold For South Africa
Nigerian-born member of Team South Africa at the Confederation of Africa Athletics, (CAA), U-18/U-20 Championship taking place in Abeokuta, Oluchi Ndebaeze, has claimed top spot in the U-18 Long Jump.
Ndebaeze won gold with a distance of 5.79m ahead of Merzaq Kawtar of Morocco 5.62m while Sandrine Bouda of Burkina Faso with a jump of 5.25m completes the podium.
It was a sweet come-back for Ndebaeze after coming fourth in the U-18 100m a day earlier.
The Nigeria-South Africa athlete was extremely excited by her performance, stating that she is very proud to bring a gold medal back home. “I’m definitely very excited, very overjoyed, because I feel like I was able to get myself up after getting fourth yesterday which is not where I ought to place, but I’m still very grateful for where I came, the fact that I was able to pick myself up and win gold, I’m really blessed,” she told FIRST ZEALMEDIACASTBLOG.
“I feel like I was consistent with the distance, 5.79m, I’m not close to my personal best, my personal best is 6.2m, but I had two no jumps that were over 6m, so I just knew that I had it within me, so I’m just grateful to take this,” she added.
She went on to add that she will not let her guards down and will start training immediately to improve on her distance, ex- plaining that there’s room for improvement for her. “I’ll go back to training and look at what I can improve on but in the long jump technically, and in the 100m on how I run my finals, because I’ll be competing at the World Junior Championships, next year in Eugene, USA.” she stated.
