Olympic Medallist Beckford seeking third Cork win. Olympic silver medallist James Beckford will be seeking his third consecutive victory when he competes in this year's 57th.Cork City Sports on July 12 at the Mardyke. The popular Jamaican confirmed to the organisers last week that he will be back in Cork as part of his competitive preparations for the Olympic Games in Beijing. Two years ago Beckford set a new meeting record of 8.19 metres breaking the old mark of current Olympic champion, Dwight Phillips. Beckford achieved his career best jump of 8.62 metres back in 1997 but last year showed much of his old competitive spark by jumping 8.37 in Warsaw and making the World Championship final shortly after another victory in Cork with a 8.09m. leap, with the leading three jumpers all over 8 metres. The Jamaican is also an outstanding triple jumper who has jumped 17.92 metres but in recent years has concentrated solely on the long jump winning silver medals in both the World Outdoor and Indoor Championships and narrowly missing out on the medals at the recent World Indoors in Valencia. He opened his 2008 outdoor season with a win in Miami recently where he jumped 7.70m into a gale force headwind.
