U.S.-based Ezekiel breaks Henry Amike’s 35-year-old record

Nathaniel Ezekiel

• Yusuf Alli’s 33-year old mark lone standing record

Barely one month after U.S.-based Nigerian sprinter, Favour Ofili, broke Blessing Okagbare’s 200 metres National Record, another Nigerian, Nathaniel Ezekiel, made big headlines on Sunday, as he broke Henry Amike’s 35-year-old 400 metres Hurdles National Record to win Big 12 title in Texas, USA.

Ezekiel, who moved to the U.S. soon after representing Team Nigeria at the last World U-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, last year, competed for Baylor at his first Big 12 Championships. He stormed to a massive Personal Best (PB) of 48.42 seconds to break Amike’s National Record (NR) that was set in 1987.

The record qualified the young Nigerian for the 2022 World Athletics Championships holding in Eugene, Oregon, U.S., between July 15 and 25. He also set a World U-20 Lead, an NCAA lead and moved to fourth on the 2022 global top list.

With Amike’s 35-year-old record shattered at the weekend, only Yusuf Alli’s Personal Best record of 8.27 metres, which he set during the African Athletics Championships in Lagos in 1989, still stands as a Nigerian record.

In the build up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, long jumper, Ese Brume, broke Chioma Ajunwa’s African record of 7.12 metres, which gave (Ajunwa) the gold medal at Atlanta ’96 Olympics. Brume jumped 7.17 metres during a competition in the U.S.

The president of Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Tonobok Okowa, described Ezekiel’s performance at the Big 12 Championships as heart warming.

Former jumper and member of the AFN Technical Committee, Seigha Porbeni, told The Guardian in a telephone that Ezekiel would rule the world if he maintained his calmness.

Also at the same meet, another Nigerian, Rosemary Chukwuma,