Tyra Gittens was again in winners’ row on day two of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Indoor Championships in Arkansas, USA, on Friday.

Following up on her women’s pentathlon title, the previous day, Gittens grabbed gold in the individual high jump with an impressive 1.90 metres clearance .For good measure, the Texas A&M University student produced a huge 6.68m leap to secure long jump bronze, breaking her own national indoor record in the process.

In January, Gittens jumped 6.62m to better the 6.57 Trinidad and Tobago indoor standard established by Rhonda Watkins in 2007. Gittens equalled her own record in claiming the Southeastern Conference (SEC) title last month. And on Friday, she improved the mark by six centimetres, the 22-year-old closing off her NCAA Indoor Championship campaign with 26 points.

With the indoor season now behind her, Gittens would be setting her sights on Watkins’ 6.82m T&T outdoor record.

Gittens already has a share of the overall T&T high jump record, Thursday’s 1.93m clearance during the pentathlon drawing her alongside Natasha Alleyne-Gibson, whose 1995 jump was also achieved indoors. Gittens also has 1.91 and 1.90 clearances to her name.

Alleyne-Gibson owns T&T’s best outdoor mark, a 1.89m jump in 1997. Gittens has cleared 1.87 outdoors, and seems set to eclipse Alleyne-Gibson.

Gittens is undoubtedly the country’s best-ever multi-event athlete. Thursday’s winning total of 4,746 points was a new T&T pentathlon record, improving on the 4,612 she had scored in January. The 2021 NCAA Indoor Championship score was also a Central American and Caribbean (CAC) record, as well as an American collegiate record.

Before the emergence of Gittens, no T&T athlete had hit the 4,000-mark in the five-discipline women’s indoor pentathlon. Marsha Mark-Baird, with 3,958 points on an oversized track, and Charisse Bacchus (3,830) were the previous standard bearers.

Gittens is also the national record holder in the outdoor heptathlon with 6,074 points. That 2018 performance improved on the previous standard of 5,962, established by Mark-Baird at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. The entry standard in the seven-discipline heptathlon for this year’s Tokyo Olympics is 6,420 points.

Like Gittens, Dwight St Hillaire is eyeing an Olympic debut in 2021. Yesterday, the University of Kentucky quartermiler finished eighth in the NCAA Indoor Championship men’s 400m finals in 45.89 seconds.

In the 4x400m event, St Hillaire anchored Kentucky to silver in three minutes, 03.61 seconds. Joshua Jacob St Clair ran the third leg for University of Alabama, helping his team to ninth spot overall in 3:08.25.

University of Oregon emerged as the men’s team champions with 79 points. Alabama and Kentucky were seventh and 14th, respectively. Alabama totalled 22 points, while Kentucky earned 12.

At press time, last night, the women’s team title had not yet been decided