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NSU’s Bell Fails To Advance At Olympics Triple Jump
08/18/08 - 10:04 AM
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BEIJING—Northwestern State product Kenta Bell didn’t advance Monday morning (Sunday night CDT) from the qualifying round of the men’s triple jump in the track and field competition at the 2008 Olympic Games.

Bell, ninth in the triple jump at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, was not close to ranking in the top 12 who advanced to Thursday morning’s final in his event.
His first jump was 54-3 3/4. He fouled on his second attempt and was three inches shorter on his final try.
It would have taken a 56-2 mark to advance. Bell lept 56-6 1/2 to make the Olympic team last month at the USA Olympic Trials.

Bell ranked 26th of 39 competitors in the qualifying round Monday morning, and second among the three Team USA entries, none who advanced.
Team USA’s Rafeeq Curry passed Bell in the last of the three rounds with a 55-4 3/4 jump that left Curry in 19th place overall. Aarik Wlson, who won the Olympic Trials while relegating Bell to second place there, was 33rd overall in the Olympic qualifying with a 52-4 3/4 best mark.
Great Britain’s Idowu Phillips had the best qualifying mark, 57-2 3/4, Monday morning among the 12 finalists advancing.

” I’m not disappointed. They jumped really good today and I didn’t. I can’t say anything negative about today,” said Bell.  “I trained and prepared and executed. It just didn’t work out. I’d rather have been here. There are 18-20 people at home who’d love to have my credential.”

Bell, 31, had his international career blossom in 2001 in Beijing. In his first major international competition representing the United States, Bell set a then-personal record with a winning 56-6 to capture the gold medal at the 2001 World University Games.

Bell has a career best of 57-10 1/4 in 2002. He was the 2003 USA Outdoor champion, sixth at the 2003 World Championships, seventh in the 2005 World Outdoors along with his ninth-place Olympics finish in 2004. Bell was runner-up at the the recent Olympic Trials, the 2006 USA Outdoors, the 2005 USA Indoors and Outdoors, and was third at the 2004 Olympic Trials and the 2007 USA Championships.

He has ranked as one of America’s top 10 triple jumpers in each of the past nine years by Track & Field News. At Northwestern, he was a three-time All-American and the 2000 Southland Conference Male Indoor Athlete of the Year under veteran coach Leon Johnson and assistant coach Dean Johnson.

The Kilgore, Texas, native, a 2000 graduate of Northwestern in criminal justice, had suffered a slight injury in late July in a competition in Monaco but indicated he was in peak form entering the Olympic qualifying.