2022 Tom Jones Invitational: All Eyes On Favour Ofili

Reigning Nigeria and Africa’s 200m indoor record holder at 22.46s, Favour Ofili will make her 200m outdoor debut Friday at the Tom Jones Invitational in Gainesville, Florida, USA.

Ofili, 19, was one of the stars of the indoor season as she ducked inside 23 seconds in the half lap event seven times, improving the 22.75 African record she set last year three times.

She also raced to a silver medal finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Birmingham, Alabama last month.

Outdoors the beautiful and hugely talented girl has broken new ground in the 100m, running a personal best in each of the two blue ribband event she has competed in so far this year.

All eyes are now on the Louisiana State University undergraduate to begin her 200m campaign with another incredible, record setting run.

She will begin that journey with a first round heat (lane 6) drawn against fellow Nigerians Amarachukwu Obi of University of Alabama (lane 3) and Bahrain/ Nigerian Edidiong Odiong (lane 5).

Ofili holds a 22.23s personal best in the event outdoors and this she set enroute to her third place finish at the World U20 Athletics Championships in Nairobi,Kenya last August.

In heat 3, Immanuela Aliu (Texas A&M University), daughter of Nigeria’s Olympic 4x100m bronze medallist, Deji Aliu and seven time Nigeria 100m queen, Endurance Ojokolo will run from lane six beside another Nigerian, Knowledge Omovoh of Texas Tech University.

Also billed to run is Tokyo Olympics 100m semifinalist, Grace Nwokocha of North Carolina A&T University. She will run from lane seven as the lone Nigerian in heat 5.

On Saturday, Rosemary Chukwuma of Texas Tech University will be seeking to translate her impressive indoor season to a memorable outdoor debut in the 100m.

The 20 year old set a new 7.17s personal best in the 60m event and observers expect that to translate to arun inside 11.10 seconds this season and the 2019 African U20 100/200m champion will be hoping to breeze past her 11.18s outdoor best in the event.

Also billed to compete on Saturday at the Florida meet are Odiong (heat 2) and Aliu (heat 3) in the 100m; Omovoh, Obi and Nigerian-American, Chidinma Ogba in the 400m.

For the men, Godson Brume will also make his 200m outdoor debut for Louisiana State University.The 18 year old has been drawn in lane nine of the second heat.

Oghenebrume was awarded with the SEC Freshman Athlete of the Week award after running 10.22s (100m) in his first individual race of his LSU outdoor career last weekend.