Yulimar Rojas, designed and built to jump

In 2022

has been for World Athletics, the International Federation, the second best athlete of the year.

She only handed over the scepter to Sydney McLaughlin, one of America's and the world's sweethearts.

Top athletes are split between those with a high winning percentage and those who are virtually invincible.

Yulimar Rojas, a 27-year-old Venezuelan, born in a humble cradle in a family of six siblings, belongs to this second category and in the triple jump modality.

She is a woman designed and built by Nature to jump.

Most of her 1.92 figure is taken up by endless legs that could just as well be used to propel her up as forward.

She has been forward and triple, to get the most out of physical abilities that silently ask for unlimited use.

However, Yulimar started focused on the high jump.

It was logical.

Her height (the same as

's ) advised it.

She almost demanded it.

Yulimar obtained some medals, in lower categories, in South American championships, and she reached, in 2013, a mark of 1.87.

But she had other more promising virtues that she should explore.

The speed, for example.

Despite her height and a muscular build that is much more elongated than crowded, at 17 she was running under 12 seconds in the 100-meter sprint.

In a rare and still experimental duplicity, she began to share height with length.

The triple jump, the idea of ​​taking advantage of his stride in the

,

and

, the three thrusts, was also presented as an option to consider.

In 2013, she abandoned the height while, in the Eugene Junior World Championship, she combined the length and triple with discrete results: eleventh in length (5.21) and seventeenth in triple (12.99).

But the decision was made and Yuli's enormous possibilities did not admit of doubt.

In any case, deadlines.

They were intuited, they were felt after each training session.

There was a diamond of maximum carats that had to be polished, and a lot, technically.

A year later, Yulimar, without all his visible defects preventing his even more visible progress, jumped 6.59 in Mexico at the Pan American Sports Festival and won the U23 South American Championship twice with 6.36 in length and 13, 35 triple.

Pedroso's teaching

Then, at the age of 19, Yulimar gets in touch via Facebook with the Cuban

, former Olympic and world long jump champion, who leads the most numerous, select, well-known team of jumpers, men and women, in Guadalajara, Spain. , multi-medalist and multinational athlete.

A workshop.

A university.

She nervous, skeptical, she asks him to train her, even though "I'm nobody."

Pedroso tells her that he knows her, that he follows her and that he sees in her some undeniable potential, worth working on.

... And Pedroso, who has combined his legend as a jumper with that of a coach, polished the diamond daily in the best technical, physical, psychological and human environment possible... And Yulimar, still quite disjointed at the beginning, but with some dazzling potentialities, he began to make great marks and win titles and medals.

In 2016 she is world champion on the indoor track in Portland with 14.41 and silver at the Rio Olympics with 14.98.

In 2017, she was the world champion in London with 14.91.

In 2018, although she misses the summer due to an injury, she again, this time in Birmingham, world

champion with 14.63.

She is the best triple jumper on the face of the slopes.

In 2019 he breaks the 15 meter barrier.

He wins, in Lima, the Pan American Games with 15.11.

And the Doha World Cup with 15.37.

Unattainable marks for the other jumpers.

The gap widens even more when Yulimar, in Madrid, in 2020, sets the indoor world record with 15.43.

The outdoor record awaits her, a record of 15.50.

Some futuristic numbers in 1995, when they were sculpted by the Ukrainian

.

That Yulimar retires them is a matter of time.

Of little time.

Meanwhile, Yuli is voted Athlete of the Year by the International Federation.

The covid delays the feat.

But, in 2021, at the Tokyo Olympics, at the planetary peak of the sport, which enhances the voices and multiplies the echoes, Yulimar performs 15.67 to break the record and hang the gold.

Still, in this 2022, he will take the lead, in the

World Cup in Belgrade, up to 15.74 before winning, in Eugene, the outdoor World Cup with 15.47.

No rival comes close to those figures, converted for them into a preliminary and irrecurrible sentence.

Resigned, they fight among themselves for the remains of the feast, while Yuli, pure Caribbean, dances bachata celebrating her life.

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