Irish long jumper Elizabeth Ndudi (© Getty Images)
Ireland may be a country with a rich history in athletics, but that hasn’t generally been the case when it comes to the long jump.
To find the last Irish athlete to win a medal in the event at a major global championship, you’ve to go back 118 years to Peter O’Connor’s silver for the British team at the 1906 Olympics – now often referred to as the Intercalated Games – 16 years prior to Irish independence.
But that drought could be set to end at the World Athletics U20 Championships Lima 24 through 19-year-old Dubliner Elizabeth Ndudi. She is third on the world U20 lists this year with the Irish record of 6.68m she jumped in Champaign, USA, in April, and she will go to Peru as the European U20 champion, having jumped an Irish U20 record of 6.56m to win that title last year.
Her goal in Lima?
“Winning,” she says. “Because after winning European Championships, even though this is the world, I still feel like I need to keep my first place up there. I've had a great season and I'm ranked pretty high, so I'll be trying to get that gold medal once again.”
From Ireland to France, the USA to Peru, it’s been a long journey for Ndudi to reach this point. She was born in Dublin, growing up with a mother who’s half-Irish and half-Dutch and a father who’s Nigerian, taking her first steps in athletics with Dundrum South Dublin AC.
She moved to France at the age of 11, where she was coached by Julien Guilard at Racing Club Nantes through her teenage years. In 2022, she smashed the Irish U18 long jump record with 6.36m, which made her a contender for that summer’s European U18 Championships in Jerusalem, Israel.
With dual nationality, Ndudi had a choice to represent Ireland or France but stuck with the nation of her birth. “I always said when I was younger that if I made it to the Olympics, I’d represent Ireland because we don’t often see big Irish athletes in athletics at the Olympics,” she says. “I wanted to be one of those.”
She finished seventh in the European U18 long jump final and made the semifinal in the 100m, but it was in 2023 that she began to soar to a new level. Ndudi broke the Irish U20 record indoors (6.42m) and broke it again with 6.44m at the junior international in Mannheim, Germany. Then came the European U20 Championships in Jerusalem, where she soared 6.56m in the final to become Ireland’s first ever field event gold medallist at the event. Her face was splashed across the front pages of Ireland’s newspapers the next day.
Ireland's Elizabeth Ndudi celebrates her European U20 long jump title win (© Getty Images)
With talent like hers, there was a range of options available for her university years and Ndudi opted for the NCAA system, enrolling at the University of Illinois last August, where she’s coached by Petros Kyprianou, a Cypriot who has worked with 17 Olympians.
“People can see in the US, in track and field, they dominate,” says Ndudi, who adds that the academic workload at most French universities would have made it harder to commit the time she needs to athletics. She says her first year in the US was “amazing”, Ndudi relishing the facilities at the university and adjusting well to the local culture. “But something I definitely miss is European food,” she laughs. “But other than that, it’s been great.”
Her workload naturally went up, Ndudi still training six days a week but with longer practices, her strength in the gym also hitting a new level. “It's competitive, but at the same time we're a team, we all hype each other up, support each other during meets,” she says. “It's great to have people with a similar or better level than you because it pushes you to be better in training and competing.”
Kyprianou made some changes to her approach, adding two strides to her run-up and putting a big focus on developing more speed on the runway. She sees many areas in which she can still make significant gains.
“My landing isn't the best,” she says. “As a child I never learned the proper way either and then in my take-off, I tend to reach sometimes and I can't get that good of a pop-up. So there's definitely a lot of things I can improve and that's nice to see because I know I can get that much farther.”
Ndudi had a strong indoor season, finishing seventh in the NCAA Indoor Championships with 6.35m and at the Gary Wieneke Memorial in April, she soared to an Irish senior record of 6.68m.
That made the Paris Olympics a very real possibility and after falling short of qualification for the NCAA Championships in June, Ndudi turned her focus to some events in Europe in June to boost her world ranking. She jumped 6.49m at an event in France but the fatigue of travel and her collegiate season caught up with her at two subsequent events in Greece. She nonetheless went back to Dublin at the end of June and shook off a sore back to win the Irish senior title.
With two months between that and her goal event in Lima, Ndudi took a short break to let her body recuperate before beginning training again.
She’ll be at the Paris Olympics, just not in the manner she wanted, Ndudi falling short of qualification but securing tickets to two full days of action via her coach, with one of those including the women’s long jump final.
“I'm not gonna be making it (as an athlete) but that’s okay,” she says. “At the end of day, I'm still young, I have Worlds. So that's a title I definitely need to get.”
Paris 2024 marks the centenary of Ireland’s first appearance at the Games as an independent nation, and amid the varied success the country has enjoyed in the 100 years since, there’s yet to be a global medal in the long jump. But if Ndudi gets it right, that could be set to change in Lima.
Cathal Dennehy for World Athletics
