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Surrey long jumper smashes record in Stockholm

SURREY — Christabel Nettey's track and field season is off to a good start.

The 23-year-old Surrey long jumper recently took gold with a 6.99-metre jump at Stockholm's XL Galan track and field meet. Not only did she break her own Canadian indoor long jump record, she set the bar for the longest jump in the 25-year history of XL Galan's women's competition.

"I wasn't super confident coming into the meet," she said. "I was more like, 'Let's just get through this meet and then get treatment.' To come out with such a big jump, it just floored me."

The University of Arizona grad kicked off her season in Albuquerque, N.M., where she bested her previous record of 6.62 metres with a 6.78-metre launch. She then took three weeks off to train before flying overseas for several meets on the European circuit, starting in Sweden's capital.

"I flew in the day before I competed before the first meet, and (my coach) just kept saying, 'You can't compete on the third day,'" she recalled.

"In track, they always say the third day after you travel is when jetlag hits you."

She may have beaten the impending loss of energy with the Stockholm event, but she admits she had low expectations for her performance.

"It was kind of weird for me because I honestly wasn't feeling that great at all," Nettey said.

"Before I left, my hamstring was really hurting and I didn't want to do too much to it because I didn't want to tire it out. I got there and I was just putting so much Icy Hot on it. Going down the runway on my first attempt, I wasn't even paying attention to the jump. I honestly don't remember thinking about anything in my jump."

Her first jump turned out better than expected, planting her feet at 6.81 metres, but the feverish crowd caused her to lose focus and run through on her second attempt.

"On my third jump, I was like, 'No matter what happens, no matter where you feel like you hit the board, just land it,'" she said.

Nettey waited "for what felt like four years" before the judges posted her distance as the crowd roared behind her.

"I was like, 'Don't get caught up in the crowd oohing and aahing," she said. "The crowd just went crazy, but sometimes the crowd doesn't really know distances. They put it up on the sign and I literally went crazy. I started screaming."

Going into the XL Galan, she said she knew she had some big jumps in her, but she never thought she'd be pull them off in Europe.

"It's just weird when you perform so well when you're not feeling good at all," she said. "That was what surprised me."

Nettey's showing at Stockholm was her best of the trip, as she stomped 6.84 metres at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix and 6.69 metres at the Malmo Games. Nonetheless, her impressive outing in Sweden puts her behind just five women who have jumped farther in the last decade.

"I'm not a stats person," said Nettey. "It's cool, but at the end of the day, you have to remember rankings don't necessarily matter in the scheme of things. My whole goal is to go to Pan Am and go to worlds. I'm not worried about all that extra stuff."

Related story from 2014: One Delta athlete, three from Surrey make CIBC Team Next

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