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HomeNewsLocal sportsMuhammad Halim Sets Personal Record Qualifying for Rio Olympics

Muhammad Halim Sets Personal Record Qualifying for Rio Olympics

Muhammad Halim competing at CAC Games in 2010Muhammad Halim had the best triple jump of his life last week at the Morgan State Legacy Meet in Baltimore, Md.; his 16.99m effort broke his V.I. National Record and qualified him for the Rio Olympic Games, his second games. The mark tied him for the third best jump in the world.
2015 didn’t go as planned for Halim as a last minute administrative change in the qualifying system kept him out of the Pan American Games. The fact is injury has limited him over several years, yet he won two medals in the CAC Games in the long jump and qualified for and competed in the triple jump at the 2012 London Olympics. For 2016 he decided to take leave from his job to focus on qualifying for the Rio Olympics in his specialty, the triple jump. It was a good decision.
Halim has had a storied athletic career. A graduate of Cornell University, he was national champion in the NCAA Triple Jump in 2008. Coached by Nathan Taylor, the V.I. National Track and Field coach at Cornell and years ago at Good Hope School, Halim, a multiple All-American, is arguably the best triple jumper in Ivy League history, he has won two silver medals for the Virgin Islands in the CAC Games long jump event.
Uniquely from a family of triple jumpers, his older brother was the Mid-American Conference champion at the University of Buffalo his senior year, and his younger brother, Hasheem, who is also a V.I. National Track and Field Team member, is a two-time All-American for Virgin Tech University where he took fourth in the NCAA National Championships in 2011 and 2012.
Halim joins Laverne Jones-Ferrette (200m) and Eddie Lovett (110m hurdles) as V.I. National Track and Field Team members who have met the Olympic qualifying standards.
For information, contact: isv@mf.iaaf.org, 643-2557 or wallacewilliams@msn.com
 

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