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| Keita Cline sails through the air on his last jump of the competition |
MELBOURNE, Australia—Long Jumper Keita Cline ended his fourth Commonwealth Games without meeting his goals of qualifying for tonight’s finals in the event at the 18th edition of the games at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.
Cline, who dropped today’s 200 meter prelims after feeling a hamstring twitch, fouled his first two jumps and registered a 7.18 meter effort on his third attempt.
“I was feeling pretty good, but was unable to pull off a decent jump and ended up with two fouls. You only get three jumps in the qualifying rounds and after two fouls, try to go for it on the third one, but didn’t get my steps adjusted,” he explained. “That third jump was way too short. My earlier jumps were just barely over the board and they were out by eight meters. But, when you’re trying to adjust on the fly, a lot of times it just doesn’t work out and obviously, this was one of the times it didn’t.”
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| Keita pops off the board in his last jmp |
Cline who first competed in the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada in 1994; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1998 and Manchester, England in 2002, said it wasn’t the way he wanted it to end, but looks forward to the rest of the season leading up to the Central American and Caribbean Games in July in Colombia.
He said his focus will still be on the long jump. He added that if one is jumping 7.90 to 8.00 meters, or 25 feet high to 26 feet, he can be a finalist in every major event. “I’ll probably focus on the long jump through the CACs,” he said. “I’ll still be working on my speed and my sprinting. I’ll be doing some 200s, with the focus on the long jump. I haven’t really even tested my 200 speed as yet to see what kind of time I can turn out, so we’ll see what happens.”
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| Keita puts everything into his last jump that measured 7.18 meters |
Cline, who has had foul trouble in the past, dropped jumping for a few years but returned to it last year and led the BVI rankings in it along with the 100 and 200 meters, said he has to do a lot of repeat work to make corrections. “A lot of run ups in practice, that’s all I can think of right now,” he said. “Just a lot of repetitions, making sure the same things are done every time to ensure I land on the board correctly. Repetition is all I can think of now, getting back to those run ups in practice.”
