Rojas to treble, Barshim to the height: double hat-trick

In the country of the ‘triple double’, statistical performance of basketball, Yulimar Rojas (triple jump) and Mutaz Essa Barshim (high jump) signed a ‘double triple’ Monday at the Worlds in Eugene.

The Venezuelan and the Qatari both won a third consecutive world title.

Athletics, like the NBA, loves numbers, series, records. Two of his greatest champions offered him something to refresh his statistical books on Monday by stretching their reign. Almost at the same time, and about twenty meters apart, Rojas and Barshim again dominated their competitors in a world final after 2017 in London and 2019 in Doha.

6th performance in history

As usual, Yulimar Rojas did not stretch the suspense, achieving a performance of 15m47 from the second jump, the 6th best of all time (five out of six belong to him). She was thus ahead of the Jamaican Shanieka Ricketts (14m89) and the American Tori Franklin (14m72).

The tall athlete (1m92) with short hair dyed blond thrilled the crowd with a biting attempt a priori close to her world record set in March in Belgrade (15m74). She just regrets not being able to line up at length in Eugene as well, with her successful qualifying performance in June having been invalidated for non-compliant footwear.

A perfect competition

For his part, Mutaz Essa Barshim managed a perfect competition by crossing all his bars on the 1st try up to 2m37. The filiform Qatari however remained under threat from the devilish South Korean Sanghyeok Woo (silver with 2m35), who came close to crossing 2m39.

With his energy, the world indoor champion conquered the crowd of connoisseurs, who chanted ‘Woo! Whoa! Woo!’ on each attempt. But Barshim remained boss after his 2021 Olympic title, which he shared with Italian Gianmarco Tamberi, 4th on Monday behind Ukrainian bronze medalist Andriy Protsenko.

Thiam overthrows Vetter again

Double Olympic champion, Nafissatou Thiam for her part won her second world title after that of 2017 by overthrowing Dutchwoman Anouk Vetter in the last event, the 800m. The 27-year-old Belgian has accumulated 6947 points, against 6867 for her runner-up. Graubünden Annik Kälin was ranked 6th.

Nafissatou Thiam had to draw on her reserves to beat her personal best by more than two seconds in the 800m (2’13”25), which she started behind Anouk Vetter in the provisional standings. But as at the Tokyo Olympics last summer, the 29-year-old Dutchwoman had to bow.

/ATS