Diamond League: Okagbare Reigns in Shanghai’s Long-Jump and 200m

Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare broke two meeting records (MR) to complete a rare moments of double glories at the second Diamond League Meeting of the 2014 IAAF season in Shanghai on Sunday.

The 25-year-old multi-talented athlete first set a new meeting record of 6.86m to win the women’s long-jump in the Chinese city, before claiming the 200m in another meeting record time of 22.36secs.

The silver and bronze medalist at last year’s World Championships beat Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic and Moguenara Sosthene of Germany to first position in the long-jump. Britain’s Proctor Shara finished a distant ninth.

Blessing Okagbare Broke Two MR's in Shanghai, China.
Blessing Okagbare Broke Two MR’s in Shanghai, China.

Her first wind-assisted (+0.1m/s) effort was sufficient to beat the previous meeting record set by USA’s Deloach Soukup Janay in May 2012, which she followed with another 6.70m (+0.5m/s) before drawing fowl.

The Olympic Bronze medalist then saw off the challenges of Anthonique Stratchan (22.50secs) of the Bahamas and Duncan Kimberlyn (22.96secs) of the USA to win the 200m.

Her training partner, Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown finished fifth.

Okagbare’s run was one second better than Allyson Felix’s 22.37secs finish time, set on September 19, 2009 at the same venue.