Super athlete Champagnie overall girl’s champion
AYESHA Champagnie of St Andrew Technical had a week most athletes could only dream of after she won three gold medals, setting a record in the Class One shot put in the process at the ISSA/GraceKennedy National Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics championships that ended at the National Stadium on Saturday night. Champagnie tallied 30 of STATHS’ 41 points in the five-day championships and was the overall girls’ champion, edging out Holmwood Technical’s Lisa Buchanan (27 points), who was also a triple gold medallist.
She won the heptathlon open with 5,172 points, the shot put Class One in a new record 14.27m and the javelin Open in 47.73m just outside the record 47.85m set in 2007. On Saturday in the shot put, she came out ahead of Edwin Allen’s Rochelle Fraser in a ding-dong battle as both young ladies combined to break the record three times. Both went over the one-year-old mark of 13.70m set by Fraser last year, but Champagnie went the furthest with 14.27m to Fraser’s 14.01m.
Edwin Allen’s Janell Fullerton was third in 13.50m. Fraser went past the old mark twice on the day, jumping out into the lead after just the first round throwing 13.73m then upped it to 14.01m in the second round. Champagnie also started well with an opening throw of 13.56m, 12.93 and 13.46 after the first three rounds. The St Andrew Technical student, however, took over the lead for good in the fourth round with her massive throw. In the heptathlon which started on Friday, she dominated the seven-discipline event, winning three of the events and finished out of the top five only once.
She took the lead on the first event, winning the 100m hurdles in 14.46 seconds, was fourth in the high jump with 1.58m, won the shot put with 13.42m and was third in the 200m in 25.80 seconds to end the first day. On day two, she started with 5.26m in the long jump for third, then won the javelin with 47.02m before running the 800m in 2 minutes 42.47 seconds to win the event by over 330 points over Alpha’s Zinedine Russell (4,834) and Edwin Allen’s Janell Fullerton (4,736).
