EUGENE, OREGON — If Christoff Bryan had broken down or found excuses for not winning a medal in the men’s high jump final on Friday night at the 15th IAAF World Junior Championships at Hayward Field, he could be excused.

The former Wolmer’s Boys athlete who will be attending Kansas State University this year, lost out on a medal on the count-back after clearing a personal best 2.24m, the same height as the medallists in the competition that had the over 8,000 fans cheering for every jump and groaning with every failure.

“I did my personal best and got fourth place,” he lamented to the Jamaica Observer. “The count back rule has got me many times and got me once again,” he said philosophically.

Russia’s Mikhail Akimenko won the gold ahead of Belarus’ Dzmitry Nabokau, while Korea’s Sanghyeok Woo took the bronze, all personal best marks.

Another Jamaican Clayton Brown also had a personal best 2.17m to place 10th.

Bryan, who won Jamaica’s first high jump medal at the World Youth Championships last year in Donetsk, Ukraine, was in the bronze medal position after the first four rounds with just two failures, once at 2.10m and the other at 2.17m. The first miss proved to be crucial to his medal hopes as after Woo missed once at 2.20m.

He got over 2.20m first attempt then took two tries to get over 2.22m but then got over his new personal best 2.24m on his third try, shouting his delight as he joined the others to go on to the next height.

All four jumpers failed to get over 2.26m, Bryan just clipping the bar with his heels on the second try that would have given him the gold medal.

Bryan was not that crest fallen afterwards and said the competition was “really exciting, and I love this so I can’t really complain, it was very competitive”.

Having dominated at the high school level and winning three straight at the Penn Relays and several times at Carifta Games, Central American and Caribbean and Pan-American Juniors, Bryan said it’s time to move on.

“I will not go to upper

sixth (form),” he said. “I will go to Kansas State, it’s an exciting time for me and time to move on from the high school system.”

He is not the only Caribbean jumper to move to Kansas State as long jump champion Akela Jones will also attend the institution based in Manhattan, Kansas.

The choice, Bryan said, was not taken lightly. “They have the best high jump programme, I did my research so I chose them.”