Hugues Fabrice Zango and Yulimar Rojas (© AFP / Getty Images)
Women's triple jump
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Since 2017 only one woman has stood on the top of the triple jump podium at global major championships: Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas. The queen of the discipline will look to continue her reign at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 23.
After becoming the first woman to win three world titles in the discipline in Oregon last year, the 27-year-old has the chance to go for a record-extending fourth victory. If successful, Rojas will own a quarter of all the women’s triple jump titles in World Athletics Championships history, following the discipline’s introduction to the programme in 1993.
She won in London in 2017 with a 14.91m jump, in Doha in 2019 with a 15.37m leap and in Oregon in 2022 with 15.47m. During that time she also became an Olympic champion, winning in Tokyo with a then world record of 15.67m, and she took her tally of world indoor title wins to three, topped by the phenomenal 15.74m she soared to set an outright world record at the 2022 edition in Belgrade.
The last time Rojas was beaten in her specialism was more than two years ago and although she lost when making her senior global championships debut at the Olympics in Rio, she still secured silver.
In 2023 she has extended her total of 15-metre-plus jumps to 44, those performances including a 15.16m win at the Central American and Caribbean Games and a 15.18m victory at the Diamond League meeting in Silesia.
That’s a barrier that two other athletes on the entry list have surpassed in their career so far. USA’s Jasmine Moore jumped an area record of 15.12m at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque in March, while Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk leapt 15.02m to win the European title in Munich last August.
Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 (© Getty Images)
That NCAA performance saw Moore become the first woman in history to surpass seven metres in the long jump and 15 metres in the triple jump indoors, as she completed a jumps double having won the long jump title with a 7.03m leap. Bekh-Romanchuk is also a double talent and has won global medals in both disciplines – world outdoor silver in the long jump in Doha in 2019 and world indoor silver in the triple jump in Belgrade in 2022. With runner-up finishes in the Diamond League in Rabat and Silesia this year, Bekh-Romanchuk will be pushing for the podium once more and both she and Moore are also entered for the long jump in Budapest.
While the 15-metre mark has eluded her so far, Cuba’s Leyanis Perez Hernandez has come incredibly close, jumping 14.98m to secure silver behind Rojas at the Central American and Caribbean Games on 5 July. The 21-year-old, who finished fourth in the world final in Oregon last year, claimed her first Diamond League win in Rabat, beating Bekh-Romanchuk and Jamaica’s Shanieka Ricketts, who is also among the contenders in Budapest. Ricketts claimed world silver medals behind Rojas in Doha and Oregon and also finished fourth at the Olympics in Tokyo.
Perez Hernandez is joined on the Cuban team by Olympic fifth-place finisher Liadagmis Povea, while the entry list also includes Jamaica’s NCAA champion Ackelia Smith, world fifth-place finisher Thea LaFond of Commonwealth of Dominica, Bahamian record-holder Charisma Taylor, and USA’s world bronze medallist Tori Franklin and Keturah Orji, who finished ahead of Moore at the US Championships.
Men's triple jump
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While there is an outstanding favourite in the women’s event, the men’s features several contenders. And the late withdrawal of defending champion Pedro Pablo Pichardo has thrown the event open even further.
Jaydon Hibbert is the world leader and world U20 record-holder, Hugues Fabrice Zango is the world indoor record-holder and a three-time global medallist, and Lazaro Martinez is the world indoor champion.
They fill the top three spots on the entry list.
Jamaica’s Hibbert has steadily been building on the breakthrough that saw him win the world U20 title in Cali last year. Aged just 17, his reaction to jumping a championship record of 17.27m in the very first round of that competition proved how much it meant. Overcome with emotion, he grabbed his head and then collapsed to the track in shock.
That performance came a year after he secured world U20 silver in Nairobi and he has since become the indoor and outdoor NCAA champion, who jumped a world U20 record of 17.87m at the SEC Championships in Baton Rouge on 13 May. He has backed that up with 17.68m to win the Jamaican title, 17.66m to finish second at the Diamond League in Monaco – his first competition in Europe – and 17.56m to win the NCAA title.
Jaydon Hibbert in triple jump qualification at the World Athletics U20 Championships Cali 22 (© Marta Gorczynska)
Hibbert has four of the top eight performances so far this season and Zango has three, led by the 17.81m he recorded to finish second at the Diamond League meeting in Doha.
Burkina Faso’s Zango, the world silver medallist in Oregon last year who also has Olympic and bronze medals on his CV, has won all bar two of his competitions in 2023, finishing second at the Diamond League meetings in Doha and Florence, and then winning in Monaco.
At the World Indoor Championships last year, Martinez overcame years of injury struggles to add a senior world title to the world U18 and U20 crowns he claimed between 2013 and 2016.
So far this year, the Cuban has finished third at the Diamond League in Florence and fourth in Doha and Monaco, with a season’s best of 17.51m set when winning at the Central American and Caribbean Games.
Zhu Yaming made the podium in Tokyo and Oregon, claiming Olympic silver and world bronze, and will want to challenge for a top three spot again. He set his PB of 17.57m in Tokyo and has a best this season of 17.36m, set when winning at the Chinese Championships in June.
Indian record-holder Praveen Chithravel will hope to build on the PB of 17.37m he set in Havana in May that puts him fifth on this season’s top list, while others pushing for top eight places will be Algeria’s Yasser Mohammed Triki and Cuba’s Cristian Napoles. Four-time world medallist Will Claye features on the US team along with Chris Benard and Donald Scott.
Jess Whittington for World Athletics
