Yulimar Rojas, the defending Olympic champion in the triple jump and world record holder from Venezuela, announced Friday that she will miss the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris due to an achilles injury.
According to Rojas on her Instagram the injury occured during training in Spain. She underwent surgery Thursday.
“My heart is broken and I feel so sad that I want to apologize for not being able to represent you in Paris 2024,” Rojas wrote. “The desire to defend my Olympic title excited me enormously but today I have to stop, understand this, recover and come back with a lot of strength to continue flying together.”
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Since finding her first success on the world stage with a bronze medal performance in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the triple jump has been Rojas’ personal playground. In 2017, she won the first of four world outdoor championships, including taking a world title last year.
Her first Olympic gold came three years ago in tokyo were she dominated the competition and then used her last jump to put her name in the record book. Her effort of 15.67 meters set a world record and made her the first woman to jump farther than 51-feet in the event.
At the 2022 Indoor World Championships in Belgrade she extended her world record mark to 15.74 meters en route to her second indoor world title..
Outside of the pit, she was World Athletics Female Athlete of the Year and Outsports LGBTQ Female Athlete of the Year in 2020.
We’ll all miss watching her compete in Paris.
