8 hours ago
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Senior Multimedia Reporter
USA-based Tyra Gittens-Spotsville failed to add to T&T’s medal haul at the 21st World Athletics Indoor Championships when she placed 15th of 16 athletes in the women’s long jump final at the Kujawy-Pomorska Arena in Toruń, Poland, yesterday.
The 27-year-old Gittens-Spotsville had a best leap of 6.32 metres, which only bettered Switzerland’s Annik Kalin’s effort of 6.31 metres on her third attempt, which bettered her first two efforts of 6.28m and 6.29m.
Portugal’s Agate De Sousa won an exciting long jump final to ensure her first global medal was a gold one on the final morning of the championships.
By jumping 6.92m in the fifth round, she took the title ahead of Italy’s Larissa Iapichino (6.87m) and Colombia’s Natalia Linares (6.80m), a season best.
Iapichino saved her best for last, jumping 6.87m in the final round to secure silver for her first global medal, while Linares added world indoor bronze with a leap of 6.80m to the medal of the same colour she claimed in Tokyo last year.
De Sousa started as the world leader thanks to the indoor PB of 6.97m she set in Madrid last month.
It was Linares who had the early lead, jumping 6.79m from her first attempt—a single centimetre farther than Sweden’s Khaddi Sagnia.
The Colombian athlete, who secured world Under-20 silver in 2022, extended her lead by one centimetre with her next attempt before De Sousa soared into the top spot with 6.82m in the third round.
The competition came alive in the fifth round. Iapichino, the European silver medallist who finished fourth at the Paris Olympics, took a few attempts to get warmed up, but she launched herself from seventh to first in the fifth round—landing at 6.84 metres.
Sagnia fouled, and Linares jumped 6.61 metres before De Sousa posted her response —6.92 metres for the second-best indoor mark of her career.
As they each took their final attempts, Sagnia and Linares could not improve, confirming Linares as the bronze medallist. Iapichino improved by three centimetres, but it wasn’t quite enough, and De Sousa closed her campaign with a final leap of 6.65m, adding world indoor gold to her World University Games title from last year and the European bronze she claimed behind Iapichino in Rome in 2024.
On Saturday, Jereem “The Dream” Richards ran a season-best 45.39 seconds in the second four-man final to secure the bronze medal in the men’s 400m event.
It was the second medal for the 32-year-old Richards in the event after he captured the 2022 world indoor 400m title with a time of 45 seconds flat in Serbia. He was also a member of the T&T men’s 4x400m relay team which won bronze at the World Indoor Championship in 2012.
Earlier in the morning session, Richards placed second in heat one in 46.10 seconds.
T&T’s lone woman team member on the track, 23-year-old Leah Bertrand, was eighth in the second of three women’s 60m semifinal heats in 7.25 seconds and did not advance to the gold medal sprint after placing 20th overall.
In the morning heats, Bertrand was a fourth-place finisher in the seventh and final women’s 60m heat in 7.22 seconds to earn a spot in the semifinal as the second of three fastest losers or non-automatic qualifiers.
Also on Friday, in the 800m heats, 21-year-old Nathan Cumberbatch set a new T&T national record of 1:46.95 on debut.
Despite the historic run, it was only good enough for fourth in his heat and 20th overall, missing the semifinals by just three places. Ireland’s Mark English won that heat in 1:46.42, joined by runner-up Filip Ostrowski of Poland (1:46.61), while Estonia’s Uku Renek Kronbergs finished third in 1:46.71 for the 18th-best time and also missed out.
The T&T team, which was managed by Jehue Gordon, with Donavan Spotsville serving as coach and Nicole Fuentes-Charles as team medic, is expected to arrive home later today.
English (US) ·