The athletes Jeavon Benjamin, Marian Burnett and Aliann Pompey have run their names into the statisticians’ formbooks on no less than four more occasions over the past week.

Pompey, the most decorated of the three, added another glow to her shining career with a record-breaking run at the Armory track in New York City, last Friday. She bettered her personal best in the 400m indoor doing a superlative 52.17 secs, which also bettered her own Guyana national record for the event.

The ¼-miler, who held the world’s fastest 400m indoor time this year as well as breaking some meet and stadium records, may have gone faster had the competition been more challenging. Her time was a whopping seconds faster than the second-placed runner’s, prompting her to state that she “really liked the atmosphere here tonight, and I was hoping for a faster time”.

Pompey also said “I felt very strong over the 200m mark even though I don’t know what my split was,” adding that there is still some ‘fine-tuning’ to be done. The Guyanese star’s performance couldn’t have come at a better time, as she is jetting across to Europe to continue her preparations for the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham, England, in mid-March.

Burnett had also achieved a qualification for the championships as she spiked out a U.S. season-leading mark at 800m in early February. However, the Guyanese half-mile champion will not be available, due to prior commitments for her university at the NCAA Indoor Championships that will be held simultaneously with the Birmingham meet.

Undaunted, the defending NCAA and Southeastern Conference (SEC) 800m indoor champion bagged one of two titles to keep on track to repeat her 2002 feat, when she won the half mile at the 2003 SEC championships last Sunday in Gainesville, Florida. Burnett, who attends Louisiana State University (LSU), recorded an easy 2:05.02 following her preliminary 2:04.87 to defeat perennial conference rivals Kristina Bratton of Florida and Beth Heinmann of Kentucky.

Five days before her conference win, the student-athlete, who is pursuing double degree studies in Kinesiology, Criminology, Sociology and Arabic, was awarded the LSU Athletic Director’s Cup for academic excellence. She was one of 29 awardees honoured for sustaining a grade point average (GPA) over 3.0 during the past academic year. The recognition ceremony was held at halftime of a televised basketball game.

In New York, high school sprinter Jeavon Benjamin extended her superb season by recording a resounding win in the 600m at NYC Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) indoor championships at the Armory track. From a talented field, the Far Rockaway High sophomore survived a tussle to record 1:32.62 to out-sprint her prime opponent, Selena Sappleton of A.P. Randolph High (1:32.83). Benjamin’s win was a big contribution to her school’s final tally of 23 points, which was good for 10th place of the 29 teams that made a point or more at the meet.