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| Keita Cline works on his bounding ahead of today's third appearance in the Pan Am Games. Photo: Dean "The Sportsman" Greenaway |
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil—Veteran Keita Cline will go back to his roots, as the British Virgin Islands athletes wrap up competition today in the 15th Pan American Games, which ends with Sunday’s closing ceremony.
Cline, in his third Pan Am Games, was the territory’s lone representative in Santo Domingo in 2003, where he was a 200 meter semifinalist. Today, Cline, the territory’s most success junior male athlete, will return to his jumping roots, when he competes in the triple jump at 4:30 p.m. Atlantic time.
“I switched to the triple jump and kind of got the feeling and the rhythm back, bringing everything back through recollection, because that was probably my best event throughout my career,” Cline noted. “I know what I want to do. I have a goal but without being too specific, I just want to go out there and execute and the results will come.”
Cline said he switched to the jump because he hadn’t been able to get the requisite training in to be competitive in the 200 meters, in a way he wanted to. He said he felt that he could rebuild enough strength to get back into the jumps, much quicker than he could in the 200, something he said could possibly prolong his career.
“I haven’t had a long season. I’ve competed in four meets and in some of them, I was doubling in the long and triple jumps,” he explained. “I had to deal with some issues with my Achilles, so I had to take some time off and I’m still working on that here. So, it hasn’t been a long season. It has been back and forth as to where to go to get the competitions in. Each year I have to come up with my own schedule as to where those are.”
Cline holds the BVI long and triple jumps national records with marks of 26 feet 1¾” and 51’7¼”. He said several people who have been helping him now, recognize the triple jump was his better event, but, it was a knee injury that sent him into the 200 meters in the first place.
