Blessing Okagbare Didn’t Make IAAF Worlds Long Jump Qualification

Nigeria sprint queen Blessing Okagbare jumped a pedestrian 6.48m at the Oslo Diamond League meeting Thursday evening to place seventh in the final classification. The former African 100m record holder at 10.79 seconds failed to hit the 6.75m qualification standard in the long jump set for August’s 17th IAAF World Championships scheduled for London.

World and Olympic champion Tianna Bartoleta won the event with her 6.79m fifth round effort while Russian athlete Klishina Darya (6.75) who competed as an Authorised Neutral Athlete and Germany’s Rath Claudia (6.63m) came second and third respectively.

Okagbare opened her bid for the IAAF Worlds ticket with a 6.21m jump before compounding matters with her second jump which was one centimetre below her opening effort. She however raised hopes of a possible huge jump after leaping to 6.40m. She added eight centimetres in the fourth jump to leap 6.48m.

Okagbare failed to build on her fourth round effort as she jumped 6.25m in the fifth round before fouling the last round to ensure she placed seventh, one step lower than her sixth place (6.52m) finish last month at the Eugene Diamond League.