Yulimar Rojas — queen of the triple jump — sets her sights long

The owner of the world record, multiple indoor and outdoor World titles and an Olympic gold wants to breach 16m. She also has designs on extending her dominance across the horizontal jumps by capturing a triple jump-long jump double at a Major competition

Yulimar Rojas at an athletics stadium is a spectacle to behold — and that is even before she takes flight. As she gets the crowd going at the start of her run-up, a striking 6’4” lean-muscled super athlete, the possibilities appear endless. Once she explodes off her hop and step, and gets airborne, she looks like something out of a kinetically drawn panel in a comic book.

As a fan of Wonder Woman and Batman, it’s a comparison the Venezuelan ‘Le reina del triple salto’ (or ‘Queen of the triple jump’) enjoys. “In this sense, I’m a bit like a child,” she said. “I love superheroes and I hope to be considered a superhero in my country and in the world.”

The first time Rojas felt like a superhero on the big stage was in Rio in 2016. Making her debut at the Olympics, she engaged in a strong battle with Colombia’s Caterine Ibarguen before taking silver. “From that moment I knew I wanted to be a heroine to my land. It was a great duel. It was a fantastic night for me. It was a dream to have an Olympic medal on my chest — a day I will never forget. But it gave me a goal: to hear the Venezuelan national anthem in Tokyo.”

Rojas achieved that goal last year, breaking the Olympic record with her first jump in the final before shattering the world record with her last jump of 15.67m, crushing by 17 centimetres a 26-year-old record that had been held by Ukrainian Inessa Kravets. She also became the first woman to win Olympic gold for Venezuela, scripting a glorious chapter in the nation’s history.

Rojas has continued to dominate the triple jump, winning her third World Championships title in July in Oregon. She also has three indoor World crowns, the most recent of which, in March in Belgrade, saw her break the world record again, with a jump of 15.74m. She is unbeaten in the discipline at Major competitions since that silver in Rio six years ago.

Hers has been a remarkable tale of triumphing against the odds. In a country where the economy collapsed years ago, Rojas was born in a ‘ranchito’, a shanty house made of bricks with a broken zinc roof. “I come from humble beginnings. I belong to a large family, six siblings, my father, my mother… living on a little farm with a lot of uncertainties,” Rojas said.

“Thanks to this, I am a different Yulimar Rojas,” she told the Olympic Channel. “It has helped me become a better version of myself. The adversities helped me believe in myself and my abilities. Yulimar Rojas is brave, joyful and a committed person. And, above all, I’m a warrior.”