Ruth Usoro was in the form of her life at the just concluded Big 12 Indoor Championships in Lubbock where she competed in the women’s Long Jump and Triple Jump events and made history doing so.
Having won both titles in 2020 before the Track season was cut short, the Nigerian athlete on Friday 26th, laced up her spikes to compete in the Long Jump and with an early lead and total Personal Best (PB) of 6.63m, looked good for the win, even despite the presence of her teammate Monae’ Nichols who arrived as the NCAA Leader with 6.75m at the Championships.
In the 4th round, it wasn’t even Nichols who staged a challenge for the title, but former World Junior Record holder in the 60m Hurdles, Tara Davis who swept to an equal PB of 6.68m to take the lead.
Subsequently, Davis passed her 5th attempt and remained in the lead as Usoro reached 6.52m. However in her final attempt of the night, she flew to a record-breaking 6.82m!
Usoro successfully defended her Long Jump Big 12 title, with a Meet Record (MR), School Record (SR), NCAA Lead, the 2nd best jump in the world for the season and the 3rd best on the Nigerian all-time list alongside Ese Brume.
To top it off, it was an Olympic qualifier, hitting the exact mark of 6.82m required to qualify for the event to take place in Tokyo later this year.
The next day at the women’s Triple Jump event where she was ranked number 1 in the NCAA, she bounded out to a huge PB of 14.36m in the 3rd round to nail the win, a new NR and the 2nd best jump ever recorded in the NCAA.
It was also a Collegiate Lead and School Record, but not only that, it secured her a second qualification to compete at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics in the event!
