Burnaby South Secondary student Ahmad Nazamani always knew he had the spring in his legs.
While growing up, Nazamani had always been the first kid on his high school basketball team to be able to touch the rim or to dunk the ball. So it is perhaps not surprising that the Grade 11 student eventually found his way to the head of the pack in the long jump at the B.C. high school track and field championships in Langley last week.
The 17-year-old Nazamani lept 6.95 metres to win the gold medal in the boys' field event at the 47th annual B.C. track and field championships in Langley, bettering runner-up Mark Maurer of G.P. Vanier by one-third of a metre.
"It was a good day," said Nazamani, who told the NOW at last year's meet that he would win gold in 2013. "That's exactly what I said. I finally got it."
This season, Nazamani concentrated solely on track and field, while training with the Vancouver Thunderbirds club.
"I was quite confident. ... I had a good year of training and knew everything would fall into place," he said.
Nazamani's distance was the eighth-longest recorded winning jump in B.C. high school history.
Nazamani's goal is to jump even farther and earn a world youth qualifying distance of 7.20m at his next two meets.
He knows he can make it. At the B.C.'s, he asked the officials if they would kindly measure one of his fouled jumps. They did, and a two-centimetre toe foul resulted in what would have been a 7.15m leap.
"It was up there," said Nazamani.
In the high jump pit, Burnaby Central's Theodora Le placed seventh overall with a 1.55m leap in the senior girls' division.
On the track, Sophia Stevenson had a meet-best fifth-place finish at 800m. But more remarkable was the Grade 10 junior's participation in a record-setting girls' metric-mile run.
Although finishing 11th overall in a time of 4:58.19, Stevenson was part of the first provincial final run where all competing girls clocked under five minutes.
"That makes me feel a little bit better," Stevenson said after the race, adding she fell during the qualifying heat and was happy just to make the final.
Jemal Reta of Byrne Creek finished 10th in the boys' 2,000m steeplechase.
