Thea LaFond at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Mattia Ozbot)
Whichever way you look at it, Thea LaFond’s triple jump triumph at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was a thing of wonder.
In literal terms, the beautifully balanced hop, step and jump she produced in the second round added up to a winning 15.02m.
The wider impact of that dynamic piece of elasticity was more difficult to measure, though the magnitude was underlined by the fact that the 70,000 citizens of LaFond’s nation could be accommodated within the seats of the Stade de France - with 4000 to spare.
For that reason alone, for striking such a mighty, historic blow for Dominica and its proud people, the green crop top national uniform the 30-year-old wore that rainy night is such a welcome addition to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
Thea LaFond's MOWA donation (© MOWA)
The tiny Caribbean island lies in the Winward Islands, halfway between Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago. At 290 square miles, it is slightly smaller in size than New York City.
Not to be confused with the Dominican Republic (which covers 18,792 square miles, has a population of 11.4 million, and for whom Feliz Sanchez won double world and Olympic gold as a 400m hurdler), Dominica had never before won an Olympic medal of any denomination.
LaFond was born in Roseau, Dominica’s capital, and spent her first six years living there before her family emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.
Her Olympic success in Paris was not just a David and Goliath triumph for her homeland but a victory against the odds in several respects for the late bloomer who, in 2024, has taken over from the injured world record-holder Yulimar Rojas as the world’s leading female hop, step and jump merchant.
Fifth behind the victorious Venezuelan at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest with a quantum leap improvement on her Dominican record from 14.62m to 14.90m, LaFond took the major step up to global podium status with victory at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March this year.
She did so in style, becoming the 30th member of the elite 15-metre club with a second-round effort of 15.01m.
In the process, LaFond also became the first winner of a global women’s triple jump title other than the imperious Rojas since the Colombian Caterine Ibarguen took the 2016 Olympic title in Rio.
Rojas completed a hat-trick of world indoor golds with her stunning world record of 15.74m in Belgrade in 2022 but chose to miss Glasgow to concentrate on preparing to defend her Olympic crown in Paris – preparations that were subsequently wrecked by an achilles tendon injury.
On crutches for weeks
Unknown to most of the track and field world, LaFond managed to succeed Rojas as Olympic and world indoor champion despite nursing a knee injury that could have ended her competitive 2024 campaign in February – and which required surgery just two days after her victory in Paris.
An MRI scan on her knee before the World Indoor Championships found a minor fracture on her cartilage. She was told she could either stop jumping for three months and miss the Olympic Games or deal with it afterwards.
She chose the latter course – as in Glasgow, nailing gold in Paris with a second-round effort, this time of 15.02m, as Jamaica’s Shanieka Ricketts took silver with 14.87m.
When the surgeon poked the fracture, a chip of her cartilage broke off. She was on crutches for weeks.
“The mentality was that I wanted the gold,” LaFond told the University of Maryland website umterps.com. “If it took blowing my knee apart, then so be it.
“An Olympic medal changes your life. Olympic gold sets your life up for success.”
Basketball’s loss is athletics’ gain
The government of Dominica rewarded LaFond with a $400,000 appointment as a national sports ambassador, a diplomatic passport and a parcel of land.
She received the Dominica Award of Honour during the country’s Independence Day celebrations on 3 November and plans have been made to build Dominica’s first track in her honour.
“We don’t often have a lot to celebrate in Dominica,” LaFond reflected. “We’re amazing people, just 70,000 of us.
“We’re not supposed to be winning Olympic medals. We cannot compete with the resources the rest of the world has but somehow, we make the best of what we have.”
Thea LaFond celebrates her world indoor triple jump title win in Glasgow (© AFP / Getty Images)
It was by accident that LaFond became a track and field athlete in the first place.
A dancer in her youth, she wanted to be the basketball team’s student manager at John H Kennedy High School in Silver Spring but the basketball coach turned her down, telling her she’d be wasting her natural athletic talent.
She joined the school track and field team instead and won state and county titles as a hurdler and high jumper, as well as a long jumper and triple jumper.
Between 2012 and 2015, LaFond was principally a heptathlete in her days as a student-athlete at the University of Maryland, where the head coach was one Andrew Valmon, the two-time Olympic 4x400m gold medal winner.
By then, she had already competed internationally for Dominica.
At the 2011 World U18 Championships in Lille, where Shaunae Miller and Faith Kipyegon were among the gold medal winners, LaFond finished 25th in qualifying in the triple jump (12.15m) and joint 31st and last in the high jump qualifying round (1.62m).
She also competed as a high jumper/triple jumper at the 2012 World U20 Championships in Barcelona and at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
It was Jack Pierce, bronze medallist in the 110m hurdles at the 1992 Olympic Games, who persuaded LaFond to forget about multi events (and the high jump) and concentrate on the triple jump.
After finishing 37th and last in qualifying on her Olympic debut in Rio, she hooked up with her present coach, and husband, Aaron Godson.
They trained on rubber mats in high school hallways and built a home gym, LaFond combining her training with working as a schoolteacher.
She won a bronze medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and finished 12th in the Olympic final in Tokyo in 2021.
Then, in 2022, the benefit of the hard graft started to show significant progress: fourth place at the World Indoor Championships, fifth at the World Championships, a Commonwealth silver medal and the Diamond League title.
Fifth place in the 2023 world final in Budapest, just 6cm shy of the podium with that national record 14.90m, was the springboard for the girl from Roseau to put herself and Dominica on the global track and field map in 2024.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
