FORMER St Elizabeth Technical High (STETHS) and Jamaica junior representative Leonardo Ledgister smashed the Southland Conference men’s outdoor 400m hurdles record, clocking 49.23 seconds in the final on last week Sunday’s concluding day of the event that was held at George Turner Stadium at Houston Baptist University in Humble, Texas.

The mark makes him the second-fastest Jamaican so far this season behind Kemar Mowatt, whose record he broke at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi earlier in the year, but he is still short of the Olympic qualifying mark of 48.90 seconds though ranked 16th in the world.

There were also conference wins for Ackeen Colley of Western Illinois University and Demar Francis of the University of South Dakota in the Summit League Conference, and wins also for Sean Bailey of University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) in the Conference USA championships and Terice Steen in the Western Athletics Conference (WAC) championships.

Ledgister, who was a finalist in the event at the World Athletics Under-20 Championships in Finland in 2018, broke his own school record twice in the championships as well as the Southland Conference record.

His 49.84 seconds in Saturday’s preliminaries was under the 50.26 seconds he had run to win at the J Fred Duckett Twilight meet in Houston on April 24th, further lowering that mark to 49.23 seconds in the final while also erasing the Conference meet record of 49.53 seconds that was set 31 years ago in 1990 by Neal McClinton of the University of Texas-Arlington.

Former St Jago runner Timor Barrett, also of Texas A&M-CC, was seventh in the race, running 55.79 seconds.

There were podium finishes at the Southland Conference championships for several other Jamaicans as Cobe Graham of Sam Houston State University was second in the men’s shot put with 16.98m and former Petersfield High athlete Stevon Crooks of South East Louisiana was third with 16.93m.

Asani Hylton of Stephen F Austin University, the conference leader in the decathlon, opted to compete in several events rather than the 10-discipline competition and had two podium finishes — second in the men’s high jump with 2.12m, same as the winner Slavko Stevic of South East Louisiana, and third in the long jump with 7.20m (0.2m/s), just shy of his personal best 7.22m – while former Calabar High jumper Nikaoli Williams of Northwestern State was sixth with 7.03m (-03m/s).

Hylton was also sixth in the 110m hurdles with a wind-aided 14.80 seconds (3.4m/s) and seventh in the javelin throw with 58.19m.

Williams was sixth in the triple jump with a wind-aided mark of 15.22m (2.2m/s).

Another former St Jago High athlete, Keenan Lawrence of Texas A&M-CC, was third in the men’s 800m in 1 minute 51.63 seconds while Janiel Moore of Northwestern State ran 1:00.95 seconds for the women’s 400m hurdles.

Colley added the outdoors Summit League men’s 800m title to the indoors after easily winning the event held in South Dakota on Saturday, running 1:51.75 minutes in the final, with his teammate Richard Brown taking third in 1:52.03 seconds

Colley had run 1:49.92 seconds in the prelims held on Friday.

— Paul Reid