Treble or quits for triple jump champion Martinez

For Lazaro Martinez, everything rested on Belgrade.

After years of injury struggles, the former world U18 and U20 triple jump champion almost quit the sport but his coach Yoelbi Quesada, the 1997 world champion, convinced him to keep faith.

That trust was rewarded with the highest prize at the Stark Arena on Friday (18), when the 24-year-old Cuban landed the leap of his life to get gold at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22.

Recording an outright PB of 17.64m, Martinez completed a treble of world titles, adding senior gold to the victories he claimed as an U18 and U20 athlete. His patience had paid off.

“To be honest, if I hadn’t come to the World Indoor Championships, I probably would have given up,” explained Martinez, speaking through an interpreter. “There were so many years with injury and disappointments that I almost gave up. Then I managed to qualify for here, I managed to compete here, and I managed to win here.

“I have to owe this to my coach, Yoelbi Quesada, who was also a world champion in 1997,” added Martinez, with the pair having achieved a full set of world indoor medals between them, Martinez's win complementing Quesada's silver and bronze from 1995 and 2003.

“Everybody gave up on me. No one had faith in me coming back. He was the only one who told me I could do it. Thanks to him, I kept training. Day after day, month after month and year after year, and look where we are now.”

In the end, one jump was all it took. On his first attempt, Martinez added 36cm to his previous best, recorded in 2018, and he backed that up with 17.32m in round three and 17.62m in round four to beat Olympic champion Pedro Pichardo and defending world indoor champion Will Claye.

“I was very emotional,” he said. “When I jumped my first attempt I thought it was 16 metres, I didn’t expect it to be so far. When I saw that it was 17.64m, I said ‘wow’ and I did feel very emotional then.”

Martinez had shown great talent as a young athlete. Involved in many sports growing up, including basketball and judo, he followed his mother, former 400m sprinter Isabel Contreras, into athletics and later chose to specialise in the jumps.

In his first season he recorded a national age-14 triple jump best of 15.38m under the guidance of coach Manuel Guilarte, which led to him joining the national U20 team in Havana.

From there, he continued Cuba’s great tradition in the discipline, breaking the world U18 best and winning the world title for that age group in 2013 before gaining world U20 gold in Oregon one year later and retaining his title in Bydgoszcz in 2016. He then competed at the Olympic Games in Rio, finishing eighth, and made the final of the World Championships in London in 2017, but injury left him unable to build on that breakthrough. Until now.

“I injured my tibia and it was very close to breaking, so I had to recover very slowly,” said Martinez. “I took time off in 2017, 2018 and part of 2019 because I didn’t want my bone to break.”

He instead turned his focus to his studies to become a PE teacher, something he says helped to keep him grounded. Then came 2022 and the long-awaited opportunity to compete indoors. His debut indoor competition was the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Lievin, which he won with a world-leading leap of 17.21m. From there he travelled to Madrid, where he won again with a jump of 17.12m to claim the overall World Indoor Tour title.

He carried that momentum with him to Belgrade, where he joined an exclusive club of eight athletes to have won world titles at U18 and U20 level as well as at the World Indoor Championships.

Afterwards, he danced in celebration.

“I love dancing. Salsa, any type of dance,” he said. “If you look back at Bydgoszcz (in 2016), even after that win I went back on the track and danced a lot as well.”

But other than dancing, what else does he enjoy doing outside of athletics?

“Partying!” he joked, before adding: “I enjoy learning and I especially enjoy learning English, because I like the English language. I am going to read book after book so when I get to Oregon, I can speak fluent English!”

So, that’s one of his aims for the World Athletics Championships Oregon22. The other will be to add yet another gold medal to his growing global collection.

“I want to keep on working, getting ready for Oregon,” he said. “It is going to be a very competitive field with Christian Taylor, Will Claye, Pichardo and all the best in the world.

“I have really fond memories,” he added, reflecting on his first world U20 title win. “I hope that Oregon will end with the same scenario as this competition here.”

Jess Whittington for World Athletics