Former Nigeria junior international Adekunle Fasasi at the weekend raced into Nigerian and African history books at the 2017 National Collegiate of Athletics Association (NCAA) Indoor Championships at College Station in Texas, USA, running a new 400m indoor best of 45.57 seconds at the semi-final stage of the event

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Fasasi, running in the colours of University of Florida, failed to make his time count in the final as he was disqualified but the 400m bronze medalist at the 2015 African Junior Athletics Championships in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia had however made history in the semi-finals where his 45.57 seconds time catapaulted him to second in the African all-time list.

Only compatriot and African record holder, the late Sunday Bada who ran 45.51 seconds to win the IAAF World Indoor Championship 400m gold in Paris, France in 1997, has run faster.

In other results, University of Texas in El Paso’s Tobi Amusan competed to her fullest extent in the women’s 60m hurdles, but she ultimately finished sixth overall with a time of 8.03 seconds.

The petite sprint hurdler had in the preliminary round ran 8.00 seconds to win her heat.

Amusan had last month raced into a new altitude-aided 7.98 seconds personal best which shot her up the national all-time ranking as the second fastest Nigerian in the event behind Glory Alozie who holds the Nigerian and African record at 7.84 seconds. She also remains only the second

Nigerian woman to run inside eight seconds in the event.In the women’s 800m, coach Tony Osheku’s athlete Abike Egbeniyi placed eighth in the final with 2:06.86 seconds. The University of Middle

Tennessee student had in the first round run 2:04.78 seconds to qualify for the final. Early this year, Egbeniyi set a new 2:04.47 seconds Nigeria record at the

Vanderbilt Commodore Invitational in Nashville, United States.Egbeniyi is the first Nigerian female middles distance runner to run in the inals of the NCAA championships.

 

Report by Miyen Akiri