Athletics: Abigail Kwarteng for African Championship
High jumper, Nana Yaa Abigail Kwarteng, last Saturday became the first local athlete to qualify for the 2016 African Athletics Championships, clearing 1.77 metres to meet the Ghana Athletics Association (GAA) B-Standard for the competition.
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The 19-year-old student of the National Sports College at Winneba met the best of the GAA's B-Standard of 1.75 metres at the National Open Championship held at the El Wak Stadium in Accra.
She not only braved the searing heats, but also overcame the divot-riddled tartan track to comfortably clear the mark by two centimetres at her second attempt to book the first ticket for the championship slated for Durban, South Africa in July.
However, her feat was shy of the lofty 2016 Summer Olympic Games high jump entry mark of 1.93m required to grab a coveted ticket for the global showpiece slated for August in Rio, Brazil.
An excited Abigail later told the Graphic Sports that she was thrilled to have qualified for the African competition at her first attempt, and was confident of qualification for the Olympic Games in Rio with more events to compete in.
She said, "I am very happy and very excited and I knew I was going to do it before I came here. I had already jumped 1.70 metres to win the GUSA [Ghana University Sports Association] high jump so my target was to qualify for the championship.
"The poor state of the tracks was a hindrance because you have to be careful in your run up. I even twisted my ankle on my last jump which was very painful, so I wish the authorities take steps to fix it for us because my major target for the saeson is to qualify for the Olympics," she lamented.
Surprisingly, much-fancied sprinters such as Shepherd Agbeko and Beatrice Gyaman failed to meet the qualifying standards for both the African Championships and Olympics despite winning the 200 metres and 100 metres races respectively.
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Agbeko breezed through his 200 metres heat in 21.77 seconds before finishing the final ahead of Stephen Opoku (21.68 seconds) and Bright Tsitey (21.68 seconds) in 21.27s which was below the minimum Olympics and African Championship entry mark 20.50 seconds and 20.74 seconds, respectively.
Meanwhile, Beatrice (12.01s) who was a hot favourite to at least qualify for the African Championships in the women's 100 metres fluffed her lines and was beaten to first place by Dorcas Gyimah (11.79s) while Cecilia Asekiya (12.19) finished third. All three ladies did not come close to the entry standards for the Olympics and African Championships which stand at 11.32s and 11.61s, respectively.
Emmanuel Appiah Kubi (10.93s) won the men's 100m, Lariba Sakat (37:45.02 minutes) clinched the women's 10,000m race, while Elizabeth Azuure (4:41.19 minutes) won the women's 1,500m.
Malik Ibrahim won men’s 5,000 metres final, Joana Agyemang (10.55m) won the women's shot put and Ezekiel Quarshie (2.02m) won the men's high jump.
In other events, Samuel Addo (15.46metres) emerged the triple jummp champion, the men's javelin was won by Richard Barnor (56.18m) while Ralio Derzu (1:56.85 minutes) emerged the men’s 800m men's champion.