Former Lady Tigers to Compete at World Track & Field Championships

Aug. 24, 2007

Former Clemson standouts Joana Costa and Cydonie Mothersill will compete for their home countries in the upcoming IAAF World Track & Field Championships, which gets underway on August 25 in Osaka, Japan.

Costa will compete in the pole vault for Brazil and currently ranks 42nd on the IAAF marks list with a clearance of 14’5.25″. The qualifying round for the vault will be Sunday, August 26 at 8:00 PM. The final for the event will be Tuesday, August 28 at 7:30. This will be the first time Costa has competed for her country at the World Championships.

Costa was the 2000 champion at the ACC Indoor Championships in the vault and earned a total of three All-ACC honors in the event while earning letters from 2000-03 with the Lady Tiger track & field program.

Mothersill, who won a pair of national titles at Clemson in 2001, will compete in the 200m for the Cayman Islands. The heats for the event are scheduled for Wednesday, August 29 at 10:40, with the quarterfinals later that day at 7:40 PM. The semifinals will take place August 30 and the final August 31.

This will mark the fifth time Mothersill has competed at the World Track & Field Championships. She placed fourth in the 200m at the 2001 event in Edmonton, Canada. In 2005, Mothersill was eighth in the final in the meet held in Helsinki, Finland.

Clemson’s women’s program has a strong history at the World Championships. In 1995, former sprint great Kim Graham helped the U.S. 4x400m relay team to a gold medal. In 1997, Graham and the 1600m relay team finished runner-up. In 2001, Michelle Burgher of Jamaica ran one of the 4x400m relay legs for the first-place team.