Alaba Akintola led a strong contingent of Nigerian athletes at the C-USA Indoor Championships in Birmingham, where they produced outstanding performances.
Alaba Akintola successfully defended his 60m and 200m titles at the C-USA Indoor Championships in Birmingham.
The Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) sophomore clocked 6.67s in his 60m qualifying heat, as well as the fastest time of 20.81s in the 200m.
He will then lower this time to 6.63s in the 60m final and clock a blazing Meeting Record (MR), Personal Best (PB), and School Record (SR) of 20.59s to win the 200m final.
By doing this, he retained his sprint titles from last year, still securing his status as the best sprinter in the C-USA circuit.
Meanwhile, his teammate Stephen Eloji and Karlington Anunagba of North Texas also competed in the 200m final. Anunagba ran a brilliant PB and SR of 6.67s to qualify for the final, and both athletes clocked PBs of 21.29s and 21.45s in their 200m qualifying heats.
However, Anunagba will finish fifth in both races in the final with times of 6.80s and 21.47s respectively.
Eloji, on the other hand, competed in the 60m Hurdles final, placing second in 7.99s, ahead of UTSA's Bashiru Abdullahi with 8.04s.
Glory Nyenke of MTSU, won a silver medal in the women's 400m final, running an impressive PB of 54.00s, while Karo Brume of the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) placed fifth in a time of 55.69s.
Isa and Onyekwelu shine in the field events
Esther Isa was in superb form in the triple and long jump events, winning the triple jump title while leaping to a PB of 6.41m for the silver medal in the long jump.
Likewise, Benjamin Onyekwelu won silver in the men's long jump with a distance of 7.43m