A medal favourite prior to the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Surrey’s Christabel Nettey was eliminated from the women’s long jump competition much earlier than expected.
Nettey finished 12th in her group Tuesday with a best jump of 6.37m, 20th overall. Only the top 12 athletes qualified for Wednesday’s final, which left the Johnston Heights Secondary graduate just 18 cm shy of placing among the top dozen competitors.
Nettey was considered a medal contender in the long jump after a best jump this year of 6.75m in Shanghai in May, and a career best – and Canadian record – of 6.99m a year earlier in Eugene, Oregon.
The 25 year-old was receiving treatment for a back injury which was aggravated by the long flight to Rio de Janeiro, and wasn’t in peak condition, said her coach.
“She’s not happy, and she’s obviously not in very good health right now,” Dan Pfaff told the Toronto Star last week, adding Nettey had spent a lot of time in Rio “trying to recover from the flight instead of training.”
After a four-year career at Arizona State, Nettey won her first major international medal at the Jeux de la Francophonie in Nice, France in 2013, winning a bronze medal with a jump of 6.63m. A year later, she added another bronze medal with a jump of 6.49m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland.
In the summer of 2015, she won the gold medal at the Pan American Games in Toronto with a best jump of 6.90m, and then placed fourth with a 6.95m jump at the World Championships in Beijing, China.
