The way forward for Canadian girls’s 100m sprinting is sky-high, led by the spectacular performances of 16-year-old Jorai Oppong-Nketiah of Ottawa. On Friday, within the U20 100m girls’s semi-finals on the Canadian Olympic Trials, Oppong-Nketiah set a brand new U18 nationwide document with a blazing time of 11.38 seconds (+0.9 m/s), placing her identify within the dialog for the Canadian Olympic girls’s 4x100m relay workforce.
Oppong-Nketiah got here near bettering her junior nationwide document within the U20 ultimate, clocking 11.39 seconds right into a headwind (-0.7 m/s). Regardless of the difficult situations, she dominated the ultimate, successful by practically half a second over opponents two to 3 years older.
This marks the second time Oppong-Nketiah has damaged the U18 Canadian 100m document this season. She first shattered the document on the Bob Vigars Invitational in London, Ont., final month, ending second within the girls’s elite 100m with a time of 11.51 seconds, simply earlier than turning 16.
In keeping with Ottawa Sports activities Pages, Oppong-Nketiah was first launched to trace and subject in Grade 4 when one among her elementary college lecturers, recognizing her pure pace, inspired her to check out for the observe workforce.
Oppong-Nketiah’s successful time on the Canadian Trials ranks because the fifth quickest by a U18 lady on the earth this yr, and the eighth quickest by a Canadian feminine (general). Her achievement has sparked discussions about her potential inclusion within the Canadian Paris 2024 girls’s 4x100m relay pool. She is presently guided by Athletics Canada nationwide relay coach Glenroy Gilbert and Gordon Cave with the Ottawa Lions Observe and Discipline Membership.
🚨CANADIAN U18 RECORD🚨
Jorai Oppong-Nketiah as simply set a brand new 🇨🇦 U18 document and U20 Championship document within the heats of the 100 metres along with her blazing time of 11.38 seconds!Jorai’s time additionally eclipses Farah Jacques’ Membership document of 11.49 seconds set in 2016.
WOW WOW WOW pic.twitter.com/PPC8D2IQS3
— Ottawa Lions TFC (@OttawaLionsTFC) June 28, 2024
In keeping with the Athletics Canada Choice Standards for the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games: “No athlete youthful than 16 on December 31, 2024 (born in 2009 or later) could compete within the Olympic Video games.” Oppong-Nketiah simply meets this criterion, having been born in June 2008. Even when she shouldn’t be chosen for Paris, her expertise and record-breaking performances counsel she will probably be a future identify to observe in girls’s sprinting as we flip towards the L.A. 2028 Olympics.
The 2024 Bell Canadian Olympic Observe and Discipline Trials are going down from June 26-30 on the Complexe Sportif Claude-Robillard in Montreal. All our motion and protection is dropped at you by Canadian Working and New Stability Canada. Observe us on Twitter on Instagram for all issues Canadian Olympic Trials and up-to-date unique information and content material.
