Chanice Porter

As she prepares to make her season debut at the MILO Central Championships set for March 7 and 8 at the G.C. Foster College in Spanish Town, St Catherine, 2011 World Youth long jump champion Chanice Porter has her sights set on eclipsing her personal best of 6.43 metres this year.

That mark came two years ago off her final jump at the Boys and Girls Championships and the soft-spoken Porter, now a lower sixth-form student at Manchester High School, knows that improving on that mark is critical. She aims to add another gold medal to her growing collection when she competes at the World Junior Championships set for Barcelona, Spain, this summer.

Her intention, she says, is to win gold in the long jump and a medal in the high jump as she hopes to be competing at both. However, she is still uncertain about whether she will do both.

"I am not sure as yet," she said, speaking at the launch of Central Champs at the Tropics View Hotel in Mandeville on Wednesday.

"A lot will depend on how healthy I am and the date of the competitions."

Elucidating, she said that if the respective competitions are like a day or so apart she will only be competing in one event. She also says that she is not 100 per cent healthy but is getting there by working hard in the gym. She copped a bronze in the high jump at World Youth jumping 1.82 metres, just three centimetres off her personal best of 1.85m set last March in Kingston.

Porter, who won the World Youth long jump title with a leap of 6.22 metres in Lille, France, last year, is fully aware that if she is to win that long jump gold medal in Barcelona she may have to jump a lot farther this time around. Cuba's Irisdaymi Herrera won the horizontal jump in Moncton, Canada, with a leap of 6.41 metres in 2010, but Porter, who turns 18 in May, wants to leave nothing to chance.

"I will be aiming over the 6.50 mark. I am getting my legs strong hoping I will be jumping about that mark," she said. East Germany's Heike Drechsler holds the world junior record of 7.14 metres that was set in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, back in 1983.

Never one to back down from a challenge while in competition, Porter, whose gold medals at Champs and at the World Youth came off her very last attempts, credits her mother for instilling in her the will to win against the odds. Laughing uncontrollably, she admits she doesn't really know what it is that makes her pull out her best stuff when her back is against the wall. "It's not anger but more like determination," she says finally as the laughter subsides. "It has to do with the way my mother brought me up. She always says you must be determined, put determination in anything that I do. No matter how hard it seems I must try."

Chanice Porter