Triple jumper Jordan Scott achieves ‘Worlds’ qualifying mark
Jamaica’s in form triple jumper Jordan Scott achieved the qualifying mark for the IAAF World Championships set for Doha, Qatar, later this year — after a big personal best and University of Virginia record 17.07m (1.8m/s) to win the event at the Virginia, Challenge on home soil at Lannigan Field, Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday.
It was Scott’s first outdoor meet of the season and the big jump came in the first round as he passed the qualifying mark of 16.95m, after flirting with it during the indoors season.
The NCAA indoors champion also had jumps of 16.66m (1.8m/s) and 16.59 (1.4m/s) on Saturday, after setting another Virginia programme record 16.90m in mid-February.
The former Campion College student, who was breaking the University of Virginia record for the third time since last July when he won the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) national senior title, had a previous personal outdoors best of 16.82m set in Barranquilla, Colombia, at the Central American and Caribbean Games in August last year.
His mark puts him fourth in the world in the IAAF rankings led by Cuba’s Andy Diaz with 17.22m set in Camagüey, Cuba, and makes him number one in the NCAA.
Also at the Virginia meet on Saturday, former national Under-18 and Under-20 champion Owayne Owens, competing for the first time in eight months, finished third with a wind-aided 15.50m (2.2m/s) and had just one legal jump.
He suffered a cramp on his second attempt and was pulled from the competition.
The University of Virginia freshman, who was jumping unattached, underwent surgery to repair a meniscus tear in November last year and missed the entire indoors season.
Owens last competed at the IAAF World Under-20 Championships in July last year.
Another Jamaican, Odaine Lewis of Texas Tech, the runner-up to Scott in the NCAA Division 1 Indoors Championships, also opened his season on Saturday, winning the event at the Michael Johnson Invitational in Waco, Texas with 16.53m (1.2m/s).
Lewis had just three jumps, all over 16.30m, and passed in his last three attempts.
