Both Lindsay Lindley and Paul Dedewo have qualified for the IAAF World Championships in London, with the duo last weekend meeting the qualification marks in the women’s 100m Hurdles and men’s 200m events respectively.
While we know that Lindley will represent Nigeria in London, which will see her going to her second World Championships, however it is yet to be confirmed which country Dedewo will decide to run for, as he has dual nationalities.
For Lindley, she clocked a Season’s Best (SB) of 12.98s (1.2m/s) to win the women’s 100m Hurdles at the Rafer Johnson/ Jackie Joyner-Keysee Invitational. Interestingly, her winning mark is the exact qualifying mark and is just 0.01s shy of her previous Personal Best (PB) of 12.97s set in 2015.
This time also currently puts Lindley at number 10 on the IAAF world list (pending ratification), and makes her the second Nigerian female hurdler to qualify for World Championships, with current World Leader Tobi Amusan the other to hit the mark, having run a time of 12.63s two weeks ago.
Meanwhile for Dedewo, he carried over his good indoor form into the outdoor circuit, and now seems ready to rub shoulders with the best in the world.
Dedewo whose forte is the quarter mile, debuted his outdoor season with a PB of 20.40s in the 200m to narrowly finish behind Chijindu Ujah who just like him also has Nigerian roots, with the British athlete also clocking a PB of 20.39s for his second win at the Sun Angel Classic in Tempe, Arizona.
This shows the level of improvement that Dedewo has had since 2016 in Sapele when he narrowly missed the Rio Olympics, and if he carries the momentum into the 400m he could also run a PB which will inevitably see him eligible to compete at both events in London.
It will be interesting to see if the US born athlete will finally decide to run for Nigeria or compete for USA. However, with the array of sprinters ahead of Dedewo in USA, it will not be a surprise to once again see Dedewo coming to compete at the Nigerian trials in July, a year after he made his first appearance at the Championships.
