Rojas starts her outdoor season with world-best jump

PARIS

Yulimar Rojas, the triple jump Olympic champion and world record holder, recorded the season’s longest leap in her first outdoor competition of the season in Alicante on June 11.

The 26-year-old Venezuelan jumped 14.83m, eclipsing the previous season’s best of 14.58 by Cuban Leyanis Perez-Hernandez, also in Alicante, in May.

Rojas set the outdoor world record of 15.67 at the Olympics in Tokyo last summer.

She surpassed that with a distance of 15.74 as she won her third straight indoor world title in Belgrade in March.

She has also won the last two outdoor triple jump world titles and is warming up to defend her crown in Eugene, Oregon, in July.

She also plans to enter the long jump after qualifying on June 15 in Guadalajara, Spain, with a leap of 6.93m that put her fourth in the 2022 rankings.

Meanwhile, Abby Steiner clocked a world-leading 21.80sec to win the women’s 200m at the NCAA collegiate athletics championships in Eugene on June 11.

The 22-year-old University of Kentucky student broke the U.S. collegiate record of 21.96sec set this year by Nigerian Favour Ofili, a Louisiana State University student.

Ofili was second on June 11 in 22.05sec in a race run with a wind of 1.3m/sec.

Steiner improved on the previous best time in the world this year of 21.87, set by 18-year-old Namibian sensation Christine Mboma on April 30.