The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

GLASGOW, Scotland — It wasn’t the type of performance that Donald Thomas or Ryan Ingraham expected in the final of the men’s high jump yesterday at the 20th Commonwealth Games.

They both bowed out at 2.21 metres or 7-feet, 3-inches to finish in a three-way tie for ninth place with Scotland’s Raymond Bobrownicki.

The gold was won by Canada’s Derek Drouin in 2.31m (7-7). Taking the silver was Kyriakos Ioannou of Cyprus in a season’s best of 2.28m (7-5 3/4) and Canadian Michael Mason picked up the bronze with 2.25m.

There was a slight drizzle of rain just before the start of the competition, but by the time they jumped, the rain had subsided, but it was extremely cold. Neither competitor complained of the weather. They both chalked it up to the lack of the execution of their technique.

As the defending champion and the 2007 IAAF world champion, 30-year-old Thomas was a little more disappointed in his defeat.

“It was a rough day,” he said. “It wasn’t in me today. I just didn’t have it in me. The conditions were alright. It rained and it stopped, but that’s no excuse because everybody had to jump in the same condition. I was disappointed because I came here to defend my title. Coming in, I thought I had a good shot of doing it. I just didn’t perform up to my expectations.”

Thomas, the former basketball player from Grand Bahama who switched to track after he competed in a high jump event at college on a dare, said he will probably take the rest of the year off to get his body in good condition before he starts to compete next year. “This was the title that I wanted to defend and that was why I continued competing, even though I wasn’t 100 per cent,” he said. “I will just see from here where I will go.”

Prior to competing, Thomas said he got some disturbing news from his family in Grand Bahama around 2am and he wasn’t able to go back to sleep. They told him that his grandmother was ill.

“It is what it is. There’s no excuse,” he said. “I just didn’t perform today.”

Ingraham, the 2011 World Junior Championship bronze medallist, took the defeat in stride. “The conditions weren’t that good, so it was really hard to stay warm,” said Ingraham, the first of the Bahamian duo to be eliminated.

“I was just off today. I don’t know what was going on. It was difficult for me to get over the bar. I was leaning too quick.

“Some days it’s good and some days it’s not so good. I guess this is one of those days. I’m very disappointed because I know I could have jumped even higher. I don’t know what went wrong. I have to go back to practice and try to correct my mistakes.”

And Ingraham, the 20-year-old former basketball player for the CI Gibson Rattlers, won’t have too much time to make any adjustments as he is scheduled to travel with the national team to the NACAC Under-13 Championships in Kamloops, British Colombia, Canada, August 8-10.