It would seem that Blessing Okagbare, Nigeria’s No 1 sprinting talent, is already returning to fine form for the 2014 Athletics Season. Last night she featured in the 100m at the Jamaica Invitational meet in Kingston, where she completely blew the rest of the world-class field away in a time of 11.19s. She looks set to provide a strong challenge to Jamaica’s Double 100m Olympic Champion, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, for 100m GOLD at the Commonwealth Games in July/August!
In some quarters, Saturday’s race had been billed as a showdown between Okagbare and Fraser-Pryce, but the Jamaican opted for the 200 metres instead, winning in a time of 22.53s. Despite not going head-to-head with Fraser-Pryce in Kingston, Okagbare still had some worthy competition in the 100 metres, including Jamaica’s 100m Silver Medallist from the Beijing Olympics, Kerron Stewart, and America’s up and coming athletes, English Gardner and Alexandria Anderson, both Silver Medallists for Team USA in the 4x100m Relay at the 2013 World Championships.
The winning time of 11.19s may not seem super-impressive at first glance, but it should be noted that the race was run into a headwind of -1.7m/s, so in better conditions, Okagbare’s race on Saturday would be much closer to 11 seconds flat – a great run to start her 100 metre season. As one can see from this race, Blessing is usually not the fastest starter but if she’s still in the mix after 60 metres, she has the best top speed in women’s sprinting, which helps her breeze past the opposition in the final stages of the race! If her form continues this way, she’ll be a sure bet for Commonwealth Games medals in the 100m & 200m (and the Long Jump too) come August – does she have what it takes to beat Fraser-Pryce to GOLD in either race? We won’t have long to wait to find out!
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