Surrey’s Nettey leaps past competition
Long-jumper didn’t have her best, but it was still enough to win at Harry Jerome meet
Christabel Nettey was hoping to use the Harry Jerome track meet as a launching pad. It turned out to be a nice, soft landing, too.
The Surrey long-jumper came into Tuesday riding the high of a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast in April, and was looking to better her meet record of 6.86 metres.
An intense competition and travel schedule left her without the lift to better her record mark, but she still took home first place with a 6.37m effort, ahead of American Kylie Price (6.05m) and Langley’s Georgia Ellenwood (5.97m), who recently won the NCAA heptathlete title at the University of Wisconsin.
“I felt kind of flat,” said the 27-year-old Nettey. “I just got back from Europe (Monday), so I’m pretty jet-lagged, pretty tired. I was just downing espressos. But it was nice to come out and compete in front of the Harry Jerome crowd. It was good energy, as always.”
Nettey is coming off meets in Poland, Sweden, Germany and Spain — all in the span of a month — and is heading to Lausanne, Switzerland, in two days.
The workload showed Tuesday, as Nettey opted out of her final four jumps.
“Yeah, I’m tired. There is no rest. Overall, I knew coming into the comp that I was fatigued,” she said. “The marks weren’t really there, so it didn’t make sense to put my body through it when nothing’s really firing. I need to probably get back in the weight room and hit some heavy weights, and get some tension in my legs.
“When you do a bunch of meets in a row, it’s pretty hard, because between the travel days and recovering from travel, it’s hard to get solid sessions in. So this past month, I feel like I haven’t really trained. I’ve just been competing.
“After Lausanne, it’ll be good to get two or three weeks in before I head back to London. I’m not going to be able to sustain all the way through to September if I take another month off of just competing.”
Nettey, who holds the Canadian indoor and outdoor records of 6.99 metres, won gold at the Toronto Pan American Games in 2015 and bronze at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. But the past two seasons haven’t been easy on the Brampton-born jumper, and she feels like she’s rounding back into form with the Canadian track championships looming in Ottawa next month.
Her 6.92m distance at the Commonwealth Games is the second-longest in the world this year, behind Germany’s Malaika Mihambo (6.99m).
“Track and field is pretty hard because it’s an individual sport. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re not performing well. You can’t hide behind a team,” she said of the past two seasons.
“It was bad timing with injuries and life going on, but I’m glad to get it back together now and moving forward, feeling really good.
“(The Commonwealth gold) was pretty exciting, especially after the rough two years I had. It was really nice to get back out there. I felt really good going into the Games, and it was nice to put it all together.”
In the marquee event of the evening, Canada’s Aaron Brown beat out the competition in the 100m, the final Tuesday race of the Canada-China Sprint Challenge, crossing the line in 10.21 seconds, ahead of Andre De Grasse (10.36) and China’s Xu Zhouzheng (10.33).
The Canadians also swept the first three events of the meet-within-a-meet — Canada leads the competition 70 points to 50 — with the women’s team of Madeline Price, Aiyanna Stwerng, Travia Jones and Sage Watson clocking a meet record 3:32.08 in the 4x400m, obliterating the 11-year-old record of 3:36.57.
The men’s 4x400 team of Daniel Harper, Austin Cole, Tremaine Harris and Philip Osei won in a time of 3:09.23, well ahead of China’s 3:13.08.
Canada’s Crystal Emmanuel won the women’s 100m in 11.43, followed by three Chinese runners: Xioajing Lian (11.46), Qiqi Yuan (11.54) and Manqi Ge (11.58).
In the night’s first event, Jonathan Cabral won the 110m hurdles in 13.58, just ahead of decathlete Damian Warner (13.64). Mike Mason won high jump with a 2.21m, above Django Lovett’s 2.11m.
The meet continues Wednesday, starting at 6 p.m. with the javelin, and concluding with the final Sprint Challenge events of the men’s and women’s 400m and 4x100m.