Grant Rivers said his record-breaking exploits competing for North Carolina State at the ACC Indoor Track and Field Championships last weekend “means everything to me”.

The Bermudian made school history at the event held at the Virginia Tech Rector Field House in Blacksburg, Virginia, after becoming their first athlete to win a title in the heptathlon.

The 5,177 points he accumulated is also a national record.

“To win the first heptathlon championship in school history and set Bermuda’s national record means everything to me,” Rivers said.

“The people who know me best realise how long of a journey this has been.”

The 23-year-old, who won the shot put, high jump and pole vault en route to claiming the overall title, refused to take all the credit for his success.

“I have my family, my friends, coach [Tom Wood], my team-mates, the city of Hendersonville, the city of Raleigh and the nation of Bermuda to thank for it,” he said. “I am nothing more than a culmination of the people who helped me along the way.”

Rivers competes in the decathlon and heptathlon.

“Competing in the multis is taxing on your body,” he said. “Sometimes you’re out there running, jumping, and throwing for sixteen, seventeen or eighteen hours.”

The graduate student is in top form having also broken the national pole vault record at the Clemson Tiger Paw held at the Clemson University Indoor Complex this month.

He cleared the bar at 4.26 metres to obliterate the previous record of 3.86 metres set by Brooke Onley in 1987.

“It has been such a pleasure for us to find out we have a heptathlete/decathlete in the US who can compete for Bermuda,” Donna Raynor, the Bermuda National Athletics Association president, said.

“Grant seems to be getting better and better. I don’t know if it’s tied to him realising he can compete for Bermuda therefore attempting to reach our qualifying standards.

“This is just fantastic and we can’t wait until his outdoor season begins.”

Rivers hopes to compete at the Olympic Games in Toyko in 2020.

“After I received my medal [at the ACC Indoor Track and Field Championships] I had the opportunity to talk to previous decathlon world-record holder Dan O’Brien,” he said.

“I told him I was going to qualify for the Olympics. Mr O’Brien looked me dead in my face and said, ‘I know you are’. I was holding back tears.

“To hear those words meant everything to me. The kid that no one believed in, was finally staring his idol in the face, and being told to go chase his dreams.”