Hugues Fabrice Zango and Leyanis Perez-Hernandez at the World Indoor Championships (© Getty Images)
Men’s triple jump
Timetable | 2024 world list | world all-time list | world rankings
All three medal winners from the World Championships in Budapest last August will be battling for places on the men’s triple jump podium at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24.
Seven months after earning his first global title in the Hungarian capital, Hugues Fabrice Zango has the chance to gain a second. A clear winner of the world outdoor crown with 17.64m, the 30-year-old from Burkino Faso will have to contend with the Cuban who holds the world indoor title, and who took silver behind him in Budapest.
Lazaro Martinez uncorked a 17.64m jump of his own to claim gold ahead of Portugal’s Pedro Pablo Pichardo at the 2022 World Indoor Championships in Belgrade.
He took the 2023 world outdoor silver with 17.41m, just 1cm ahead of his Cuban team-mate Cristian Napoles, who finished with the bronze.
Zango heads the list of entrants on season’s bests, having jumped 17.21m in Lievin on 10 February, but his Cuban rivals have been struggling for form. Martinez is seventh on the entry list with 16.87m and Napoles 10th with 16.30m.
The Glasgow field includes 10 of the 12 finalists from last year’s outdoor World Championships but, Zango apart, only three of them have bettered 17 metres thus far in the 2024 indoor season.
Chinese pair Zhu Yaming and Fang Yaoqing have yet to compete indoors in 2024. But Zhu has proven to be a strong championship performer in recent years, taking Olympic silver in 2021, world bronze in 2022 and finishing fourth at last year’s World Championships.
Algeria’s Yasser Mohammed Triki, fifth in Budapest, is second on the list with the 17.18m he jumped as runner-up to Zango in Lievin.
Italy’s Emmanuel Ihemeje and Tiago Pereira of Portugal, eighth and 11th in the 2023 world outdoor final, have marks of 17.03m and 17.02m respectively.
Max Hess, the 2016 world indoor silver medallist, jumped 17.03m to win his eighth German indoor title in February. He earned the second of his four successive European indoor bronze medals in Glasgow in 2019.
Women’s triple jump
Timetable | 2024 world list | world all-time list | world rankings
Leyanis Perez Hernandez goes into the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 on top of the global pile on form but with a point to prove in the women’s triple jump.
The Cuban, who turned 22 in January, left the World Championships in August last year with the bronze medal but also with “bitter feelings”.
After opening with a jump of 14.96m, Perez Hernandez had her sights on gold, with the world record-holding Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas out of sorts and Ukraine’s Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk just 4cm ahead in pole position.
Perez Hernandez remained in the hunt in second until Rojas found some form with a winning 15.08m in the final round. “Even though I won my first medal at a World Championships, I am not satisfied with my performance,” Perez Hernandez confessed.
Having opened her season with a winning 14.45m in Metz on 3 February, the Cuban improved to 14.86m in Mondeville four days later – a performance that puts her more than a quarter of a metre clear at the top of the 2024 world list.
Thea Lafond, the Commonwealth silver medallist from the Dominican Republic, stands second on the list. She jumped 14.60m at Virginia Beach on 3 February – 30cm down on the national record that earned her fifth place in the world outdoor final last year.
Lafond finished fourth in the 2022 world indoor final in Belgrade, 11cm down on bronze medallist Kimberly Williams, who will be seeking a third successive podium finish in Glasgow.
Third to Rojas and Bekh-Romanchuk in the Serbian capital, the 35-year-old Jamaican took silver behind Rojas in Birmingham in 2018.
She has a modest season’s best of 13.83m but has happy memories of Glasgow, where she struck Commonwealth gold 10 years ago.
It was at the 2022 World Indoor Championships that Perez Hernandez made her global senior debut, finishing 11th with 13.99m. The previous year she travelled to the Olympic Games in Tokyo but suffered an injury in warm up and scratched from the qualifying round.
At the 2022 World Championships in Oregon she finished fourth, missing the podium by a tantalising 2cm – all grist to the motivational mill.
A podium finish in Glasgow would represent progress for the US jumper Keturah Orji. Bronze medallist in the triple jump and runner-up in the long jump at the World U18 Championships in Donetsk 11 years ago, she has placed fourth and seventh in the past two world indoor finals.
Orjj won the US title with 14.50m in Albuquerque on 17 February, the third best performance of the year so far. Fourth on the list is Jasmine Moore, the runner-up in Albuquerque with 14.43m.
Liadagmis Povea was fifth at the last World Indoors and fifth at the Olympic Games sixth months prior to that. The Cuban placed sixth in Budapest last year, but produced her best jump outside of Havana, 14.87m.
Olympic bronze medallist Ana Peleteiro-Compaore is rounding into form. The Spaniard, who took world indoor bronze in 2018, has a season’s best of 14.32m. She has fond memories of Glasgow, too, as it’s where she won European indoor gold in 2019 with a national indoor record of 14.73m.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics
