Nigeria’s reigning queen of the track, Blessing Okagbare raced to a new 10.89 seconds personal season’s best in 100m but that was not enough to earn her a medal at Tuesday’s Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in Budapest, Hungary.
She finished fourth behind two Jamaicans, 2016 Rio Olympics double sprint champion, Elaine Thompson-Herah (10.71) and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.82) as well as fellow African, Ivory Coast’s Marie-Jose Ta Lou who ran 10.86 seconds to place third.
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Okagbare who won the event back-to-back in 2016 and 2017 faced her biggest test ever at this year’s event.
While she failed to win for the third time in Budapest, she, however, returned with a personal season’s best, her fifth legal run inside 11 seconds this season and 23rd overall since she first broke 11 seconds at the Aviva Grand Prix in Crystal Palace, London in July 2012.
Okagbare will now head to the Stade Louis 11 stadium in Monaco for the Herculis Zepter Diamond League meeting on Friday with her sights set on becoming the first Nigerian nay African woman to break 22 seconds in the half lap race.
Meanwhile, shot putter, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi came fourth in his event in his first competition in the European circuit this year.
The reigning African Games champion threw a distance of 21.43m to place fourth behind Walsh Tomas of New Zealand (22.22m), Milhajevic Filip of Croatia (21.77m) and Nigerian-American, Josh Awotunde (21.70m).
Enekwechi made it all the way to the final two years ago at the World Athletics Championship and will be hoping for a repeat performance in Tokyo when he makes his Olympics debut.
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