Carey McLeod of the University of Tennessee (UT) produced a massive personal best jump of 8.21m (0.0m/s) on Friday at the University of Louisville Clark Woods Memorial, the fifth best by a Jamaican man.

McLeod, the former Garvey Maceo and Kingston College athlete, added a third UT programme record after breaking both the indoor long and triple records earlier and is the fifth best in the world so far.

The athlete, who has already achieved the qualifying standard for both the long and triple jumps at the Olympics set for later this year, needed just one jump on the night to best the previous UT record 7.96m set by Justin Hunter in 2011 and beat his previous best 7.79m set in March 2017.

The mark also decimated the old meet record, 7.63m, and puts him only behind four other Jamaican men all time — national record holder Tajay Gayle, who did 8.69m set while winning the event at the World Championships in 2019; James Beckford’s 8.62m set in 1997; Alain Bailey’s 8.35m set in 2010 and Demar Forbes’s 8.29m set in 2017.

Charokee Young of Texas A&M ran a personal best 51.49 seconds to win the women’s 400m at the LSU’s Alumni Gold meet at Bernie Moore Stadium, just marginally ahead of LSU’s Favour Ofili who also had the same time.

Ackera Nugent became the second fastest 100m hurdler at Baylor University after she ran a college personal best 12.87 seconds (0.9m/s) for third place at the same meet.

The former Excelsior High student, who won the NCAA Division 1 60m hurdles title, beat the previous best 13.23 seconds she set earlier and is only behind the 12.59 seconds set by Tiffani Mc Reynolds in 2014.

World Under-20 champion Damion Thomas of LSU was second in the 110m hurdles with 13.37 seconds (1.9m/s), behind Alabama’s Robert Dunning 13.28 seconds.

Lamara Distin of Texas A&M was second in the triple jump with a personal best 13.24m (-1.0m/s), eighth best all times for the programme.

Kevona Davis of the University of Texas was second in the women’s 200m in 23.15 seconds (0.6m/s), losing to her teammate Kynnedy Flannel (22.75 seconds), while former Manchester High and Holmwood Technical’s Kavia Francis of Baylor was fourth with 23.44 seconds.

— Paul Reid