Patrick Kiprop claims 10k silver, Jack Turner leads decathlon

GAINESVILLE – The first day of the SEC Championships finished with the 10,000m final and Arkansas produced 14 team points with Patrick Kiprop leading the way with a silver medal performance.

Meanwhile, the Razorbacks are currently in 1-2-5 place after the first day of the decathlon. Jack Turner is the day one leader in the decathlon with 4,269 points after setting career best times in the 100m and 400m.

Qualifying races on the first day of the SEC Championships had a pair of Razorbacks advancing in two events with Lance Lang in the 200m and William Spencer, Jr. in the 400m hurdles.

Kiprop posted a time of 29:41.29 as the runner-up behind a 29:36.95 for Alabama’s Victor Kiprop while Tennessee’s Yaseen Abdalla was third in 29:58.93. The other Razorbacks in the race had Kirami Yego finishing fourth in 30:06.49, Jacob McLeod placing eighth in 30:28.69, and Myles Richter was 12th in 30:58.24 on a warm and humid evening.

A 10.56 (961 points) runner-up finish started the day off for Turner and in the fifth event he broke the SEC decathlon meet record in the 400m with a 47.35 (941 points) to better the 47.44 standard set in 1992 by Tennessee’s Matt Shelton.

Turner topped the field in the long jump with a 24-3 (7.39) leap for 908 points. Then he finished fourth in the shot put with a toss of 43-0.25 (13.11) for 674 points. A clearance of 6-6 (1.98) in the high jump picked up 785 points as he matched the best height produced by teammate Marcus Weaver.

Yariel Soto Torrado is in second place with 4,102 points while Weaver is fifth with 3,755 points.

Lang improved his season best to 20.34 and is No. 6 on the UA all-time list. Lang won his heat with that time and was fourth fastest overall behind times of 20.17 by Auburn’s Makanakaishe Charamba, 20.18 by Alabama’s Tarsis Orogot, and 20.29 by defending champion Robert Gregory of Florida.

The final time advancing to the final was 20.47 while a trio of athletes with times of 20.51 didn’t advance. Racing in the same heat with Lang were teammates Tevijon Williams (20.93) and Connor Washington (20.98).

Spencer improved his time in the 400m hurdles to 49.98, which ranks him No. 6 on the UA all-time list. He finished third in his heat and placed seventh overall among the nine hurdlers advancing to the final.

Riley Wells ran a season best of 1:48.90 to place third in the first prelim heat of the 800m, which placed him 12th overall with the top nine advancing to the final as 1:48.27 was the final qualifying time.