The jump, the fear, the cry. Three elements that are inextricably linked to Malaika Mihambo. So the public has it in mind, her triumph of August 3, 2021: How she suddenly lies in front of the bronze in the Tokyo stadium with a three centimeters of Tokyo in the last attempt, but still has to wait for possible counterattacks. And finally: the certainty, the joy: Olympic champion! And yet it is other aspects that Mihambo itself connects to Tokyo first. “For me, the competitions always stand for the process that I went that year,” she says. Going away and growing on them, Malaika Mihambo understands her sport.
And now that she returns to the World Cup in Tokyo, you can ask: How has it grown since then?
:Timetable of the 2025 Athletics World Cup in Tokyo
Four years after the Olympic Games, the athletics elite comes back to Tokyo. All decisions of the 2025 Athletics World Cup at an overview.
Since the beginning of September, the 31-year-old has been in Japan, in the training camp of the German Athletics Association in Miyazaki, in the very south of the country. She took extensive walks to the beach there, was plenty of Matcha latte in the café and visited a shrine. Sucking up culture is her thing. In terms of sport, four years ago there was a difficult season behind Mihambo, after a change of coach, her attempt was adjusted. “I have not implemented this change well,” she says, “mental problems became mental problems from the technical challenges.” A completely different situation than with her World Cup title two years earlier in Doha: she had previously won a number of competitions with a 20 centimeters’ lead or more. Everything ran like by itself. “It is easy to believe in yourself. But to do it if you don’t win every competition and if you keep making mistakes, that’s the art.”
Four years later, Malaika Mihambo is still a precision mechanic when it comes to sprinting, jumping and flying. And at a level like hardly any other in their sport. Of the Olympic finalists of 2021, only a fraction of their class kept their class, many are no longer there. Some too old, the others too weak or too doped. Mihambo is the constant in the women’s jump. Her balance in the four years since Tokyo: she was able to achieve another World Cup and European Championship title, and Olympic silver. And she used her awareness to position herself politically: for environmental protection and against racism. As a child, she experienced the latter herself, the sport showed her the way to more self -esteem.
So now Tokyo, “I have a very good feeling,” says Mihambo with regard to the upcoming World Cup. She is fit, feels healthy. A relief with a view to the past few years.
Mihambo says: “At Post Covid there is no clear way of acting how you can or should proceed”
Again and again she had to accept that her body also only had limited resources. In 2022 at the European Championship in Munich, she competed weakly after a Corona infection and suffered a collapse. In 2023 in Budapest, she was missing due to a muscle injury. And then the drama of Paris last year: a new Olympic triumph failed, the competition briefly produced a Mihambo, which was beaming with joy-and then one who was driven for breath and a wheelchair from the Stade de France after the round of honor. Again it was the Coronavirus that had drained her body for a long time, the aftermath weakened them. And yet Mihambo still jumped to silver. Was it a mistake to compete despite the preload? “I think that was perfectly fine,” says Mihambo today, “there is no clear way of acting at Post Covid how to or should proceed. I was always in conversation with the doctors, so there was no risk of permanent damage.”
In Tokyo, she now wants to become an artist in terms of self -motivation again. Also this time she still has to work on her start. Mihambo said as many invalid attempts as ever before, said Mihambo after her German championship title in Dresden to appease again: The attempt is nevertheless more stable than ever, only on the last three steps she still has to work. And that is actually filigree work: at 36 kilometers per hour, Mihambo in Dresden drumbles on the beam bar, “one of the fastest values that have ever been measured. The long jump lives from the speed”. At the end of August, she quickly changed her start -up tactics, now she does not reach the top speed shortly before the bar, but earlier. A risk, so shortly before the World Cup? “Better to take the right step late than not at all,” she says.
The hunted will not be Mihambo this year, but Paris Olympic champion Taris Davis-Woodhall from the USA, which only set 7.12 meters in the pit at the end of July. Mihambo’s annual best value was seven months ago at 7.07 meters – but if someone has mastered the best performance at the crucial moment, then it is the German.
And she already knows that she primarily wants to enjoy the time in Tokyo. Four years ago, the athletes could hardly discover anything else than the stadium and team hotel under the Corona conditions, now Mihambo already has a few travel destinations in their heads and backpack in their luggage. “After the World Cup, I will travel around in Japan for a few more weeks and get to know the country and people, I’m looking forward to it. I have not yet booked a return flight,” she says. Take situations as they come. A motto that the Olympic champion not only follows in her sport.
