Wow! Just wow! Shericka Jackson and Yohan Blake produced impressive performances to land the women’s and men’s 100m titles on the second day of the JAAA National Senior and Junior Championships inside Kingston’s National Stadium on Friday night.
Jackson, the bronze medallist in the 100m final at last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, stormed to a 10.77-second (0.9mps) clocking to romp home ahead of Kemba Nelson with a personal best 10.88 seconds, with Olympic Games double sprint champion Elaine Thompson-Herah settling for third in 10.89 seconds.
Brianna Williams with a personal best 10.94 seconds was fourth after leading for the first 80m of the event, which was delayed for more than 10 minutes due to technical glitches, as the competitors were called to their mark on a number of occasions.
In the men’s equivalent run earlier, Yohan Blake ran his best time in 11 years when he stopped the clock at 9.85 seconds (1.0mps) to win the event ahead of Oblique Seville with 9.88 seconds and Ackeem Blake in third place in a personal best 9.93 seconds.
Earlier, Seville (9.92 seconds) and Yohan Blake (9.98 seconds) won their respective semi-final events to set up the mouth-watering final, which did live up to its billing.
Meanwhile, Jaheel Hyde and Janieve Russell captured the 400m hurdles crowns. Hyde (48:15 seconds) defeated Kemar Mowatt
(48.53 seconds) and Shawn Rowe with 49.66 seconds.
Russell (53.63 seconds) came from behind to defeat Shian Salmon with 53.82 seconds and Rushell Clayton (54.20).
The women’s discus was won by Samantha Hall with 56.78m, well below the World Championships qualifying standard of 63.5m, while Lushane Wilson won the men’s high jump after clearing 2.18m, the same height cleared by second-place finisher Romaine Beckford. Both are well below the standard qualifying mark of 2.33m.
