Yulimar Rojas; The Greatest Venezuelan Athlete
Allow a picture to be painted for a moment; you are sitting amongst the crowd at the Tokyo Olympics track on Aug. 1, 2021. Your eyes focus on the top of the jumping runway where a tall, lean, athletic woman is staring down the runway with intensity and focus, preparing to take off.
She begins to take her run down, covering an astonishing amount of ground with her strides and picking up speed down the runway. She hits the board with a massive leap off her right leg, followed by a smaller leap from the same leg, before striking the ground with her left leg creating a colossal leap as she soars over a sand pit. The measurement markers next to the runway fly past; 13 meters, then 14 meters, then deep into 15 meters, before our protagonist lands smoothly in the sand.
Upon her exit from the sand pit, she looks behind her to see a white flag raised in the air. She begins jumping and running, with a huge grin across her face and an uncontainable energy and happiness. This is the beginning of a legacy that would make Yulimar Rojas both the greatest women’s triple jump athlete and the best Venezuelan athlete in history.
For Rojas, this gold medal was another – albeit critically major – milestone in an already accomplished athletic career. Before those Olympic Games, Rojas had won a silver medal in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games making her the first Venezuelan female athlete to win an Olympic medal.
In 2017, the Caracas native became the first Venezuelan athlete to win a gold medal at the Outdoor World Athletics Championships, which Rojas did again in 2019, 2022, and 2023. As well as winning gold at the Indoor World Athletics Championships in 2016, 2018, and 2022. Giving her a record-breaking seven total world championships displaying a staggering consistency at a level beyond elite.
Rojas’ gold medal win at the 2020 Olympics was a critical point in her legacy, and a colossal step towards her finalizing her legacy of the greatest women’s triple jumper in the world, along with the medal she also set astounding Olympic and outdoor world records for triple jump with her mark of 15.67 meters.
Her legacy was finalised in an event subsequent to Tokyo; the Indoor World Championships of 2022. Where Rojas shattered her own indoor world record with a mark of 15.74 meters, beating the 2nd place athlete by an entire meter (an incredibly rare feat) and becoming the only woman to ever win the indoor world championships three times.
The coming Paris Olympic Games in July 2024 will prove to be another challenge for Rojas, as she will no doubt be aiming to break her own world record and win another gold medal, further cementing her as “la reina del triple salto” and as the greatest Venezuelan athlete of all time.
