Posted: February 7, 2006

Athletics: IAAF World Rankings

Gaisah Moves Into Second In Long Jump Event Rankings

Monte Carlo - This week’s IAAF World Rankings sees the most changes yet in 2006. The meetings in Stuttgart, Stockholm, New York and Moscow supplied most of the outstanding results, but one should not forget Kajsa Bergqvist’s World Record from the Arnstadt Hochsprung mit Musik meet, or the Sydney Australian Championships down under.

The most notable change since the previous edition of the Rankings belongs to Ignisious Gaisah from Ghana. The 22-year-old first clinched victory at the GE Galan in Stockholm with 8.36m (1302 points), before winning again in Stuttgart over the weekend with 8.23m (1275 points) to his name. With the wins Gaisah overtook Miguel Pate of the US and moved into second place in the Men’s Long Jump Event Rankings. This is the first time in the history of the IAAF World Rankings that an athlete from Ghana is ranked in such a high position, in any Event Ranking. Also, Gaisah improved in the Men’s Overall Rankings and moved into the Top-100, in 82nd place.

Sweden’s Kajsa Bergqvist had a week to remember. The 29-year-old started off by winning the GE Galan in front of her home crowd with 1.98m (1272 points), then went on to pass Heike Henkel’s World Record of 2.07m in Arnstadt Germany. Bergqvist cleared 2.08m (1336 points) for the new mark. As she has been leading the Women’s Event Ranking for a number of weeks there was no higher place to improve to there, but Bergqvist did increase her lead over the rest of the field and moved up in the Women’s Overall Rankings to 18th.

The full IAAF World Rankings can be seen here: IAAF.org.

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