Nigeria’s Jami Schlueter set a new national record in the men’s indoor heptathlon at the 2026 US Combined Events Championships in Indianapolis on Sunday, scoring 5,871 points to move to second on the African all-time list, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
The 23-year-old improved on the previous Nigerian record he had set just two weeks earlier in Texas, marking the second time in a fortnight he has rewritten the national mark since switching allegiance from Great Britain to Nigeria.
His latest total places him behind only Algeria’s Larbi Bourrada in African indoor history.
Schlueter finished fifth overall in the competition. Hakim McMorris won the title with 6,255 points, ahead of Heath Baldwin on 6,245, while Kendrick Thompson was third with 5,963
His performance in Indianapolis featured a season’s best of 6.98s in the 60m, a personal best of 7.39m in the long jump, 14.40m in the shot put and 1.91m in the high jump.
He added a personal best of 7.97s in the 60m hurdles, a season’s best 4.55m in the pole vault and a personal best of 2:43.59 in the 1,000m to complete the seven-event contest.
The championships are not a selection event for the 2026 World Athletics Indoor Championships, but the performance underlines Schlueter’s rapid progress in the combined events since becoming eligible to compete for Nigeria in November 2025 under World Athletics transfer rules.
Born to a German father and Nigerian mother, Schlueter embraced his Nigerian heritage after previously representing Great Britain.
A University of Washington graduate, he has steadily climbed the rankings, winning Big Ten silver medals in both the heptathlon and decathlon in 2025.
He had set a personal best of 5,780 points at the UW Invitational in Seattle in 2025 before improving to 5,789 at the Texas A&M Charlie Thomas Invitational in February, a mark ratified as a Nigerian national indoor record and surpassing the previous standard of 4,859 set by Chukwuma Maduka in 2018.
With a decathlon best of 7,739 points, Schlueter is also closing in on Ituah Enahoro’s Nigerian record of 8,048 points set in 2018 before Enahoro switched allegiance to Germany the following year
