Yulimar Rojas is tense.
She awaited Hayward Field the triple jump world record holder with anticipation.
"How far can Rojas jump?" World Athletics asked in the analysis of the test that the World Cup organization usually publishes before it is held.
“Will it happen in Eugene?” added the text, throwing into the air the question of whether it would break the long-awaited 16-meter barrier in Oregon.
However, the first of the six jumps arrives, 14.60m, below her usual level, surpassed even by the Jamaican Shanieka Ricketts, who takes flight to score 14.89m.
And the Venezuelan talks and talks with her coach, Iván Pedroso, to calm down.
“I felt a bit tense, I was coming off an injury and I hadn't had many competitions.
I had to find myself, find sensations, find the rhythm”, she will explain at the end.
The margin to be champion is still great.
Five more jumps are many jumps in front of Puerta La Cruz.
And the conversation has an immediate healing effect: she hits a second jump of 15.47m (+1.9 wind), the best of the year, the fifth longest in history on a list in which she has seven of the ten greater.
“From the second jump, when I released all that tension, it was different.
I just wanted him to enjoy himself, to do it big, to have a great time and that's how it was”, explains the athlete on Pedroso's instructions, in charge of one of the most powerful jump training groups in the world in Guadalajara, in which Ana Peleteiro, Jordan Díaz or Tessy Ebosele also progress.
That second jump, unattainable for her rivals -only one of them had managed to exceed 15 meters in her career, the Portuguese Patrícia Mamona, with 15.01m-, assures her the world title, the third outdoors under her belt.
And she leaves her alone on the cusp of history.
Never has a woman obtained the triple wound — until now she was tied with the Colombian Caterine Ibargüen, the Cuban Yargelis Savigne and the Russian Tatyana Lebedeva—.
The Olympic champion in Tokyo then parks the earthly battle, and gets down to work to try to settle other accounts with history: she has been only three centimeters away from breaking the record for the championships, and she has long expressed that her goal is to become the first woman to break the 16 meter barrier.
The record with which he reaches Eugene, 15.74m, achieved at the Belgrade World Cup in March —where he won his third indoor world championship—, is only 26 centimeters from that border, so arbitrary, but at the same time so round. , which has been proposed to transfer.
Outdoors he is slightly further away, 15.67m.
But Yulimar Rojas tries it with faith, who addresses the Hayward Field public so that they play their part in the animation towards the feat.
On the third attempt he goes back a little, 15.24 meters.
He turns for advice to Pedroso, the award-winning long jumper who has run her since she contacted him on Facebook asking him to train her.
Triple jump world champion Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela jumps at Hayward Field on Monday. ALEKSANDRA SZMIGIEL (REUTERS)
But July 18 will not be the day that the woman jumps beyond 16 meters: risking more in search of the feat, she makes nulls in the fourth and fifth, and marks 15.39m in the last.
Among her opponents, Jamaican Shanieka Ricketts takes silver with 14.89m in her first jump, and American Tori Franklin is bronze with 14.72m.
“It has not been with the brand that I wanted due to some factors.
The first thing is that I didn't compete much this year”, Rojas declares at the end, happy for the victory, but aware that he has not fully exploited his potential, partly due to the wind, which he blames for not being able to find the best impulse race .
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