Overcoming your own doubts: Malaika Mihambo leaps to gold.
Photo: imago images / Olaf Rellisch
To get an idea of the distance between joy and suffering on Tuesday in the Olympic Stadium, it was enough to take a look at the take-off board during the long jump. The area that the jumpers were allowed to touch with the shoe before the attempt is declared invalid is 20 centimeters. It was precisely that 20 centimeter gap in the women’s final between the Olympic champion and eighth-placed Jazmin Sawyers from Great Britain. An Olympic decision in this discipline has never been so close that Malaika Mihambo needed luck to jump into the history books. But it was no coincidence that at the very end of the competition the German managed the longest leap into the pit in Tokyo. With a seven-meter set in the sixth attempt, the woman from Oftersheim was crowned Olympic champion.
“I believed in it until the very end,” said the 27-year-old some time after her golden second flight. Over the past few years, Mihambo has acquired the psychological strength to be able to fight back once the competition has lost its physical and, as a result, its mental strength. In the past few months, however, it was not foreseeable whether she would also be able to show this special quality at the Olympic Games. Mihambo was out of step.
In the moment that made her one of the greatest German sports stars, none of that counted anymore. Mihambo was on the run for the last time, and it gave her, as she later admitted, a sense of calm that she was at least guaranteed a bronze medal. Since her second jump she had been on the medal course, 6.95 meters would have meant third place. The competitors behind her had already finished the competition, and there was no longer any danger from behind.
Regardless of her last attempt, she would not leave Tokyo defeated, albeit not a beaming winner. After a year of uncertainty, the 2018 European and 2019 world champions, who had gotten used to winning the German public and themselves, could imagine the Olympic Games without precious metal. “It was a bit bumpy,” Mihambo had admitted before leaving for Tokyo. In her best season, which she had crowned with the world title, she had flown permanently over the seven-meter mark in 2019, which is a magical limit for women. She had come up to 7.30 meters, miles away from the competition.
In 2021 she was no longer able to do that. After winning the World Cup gold, her long-time trainer Ralf Weber left the successful team “for personal reasons”; an intended collaboration with the American superstar Carl Lewis has not yet come about due to the corona. Mihambo looked insecure, the approach no longer worked. If the confidence in the stride length before the jump is no longer there, long jumpers and tennis players stumble, who no longer want to succeed in the first serve. “I had self-doubts,” she admitted in the belly of the Olympic Stadium as the gold medal dangled around her neck.
She did not reach seven meters in the current season, the field of competitors narrowed. In the Olympic final everything condensed again, Mihambo’s 6.95 meters before the last jump were two centimeters worse than the widths of Brittney Reese (USA) and Ese Brume (Nigeria), but also only four centimeters better than the performance of fourth Ivana Spanovic (Croatia). A fingernail-width separated Mihambo from the Olympic victory, and at the same time from the lack of medals.
After her jump nothing changed about the tiny distances, but thanks to the 7.00 meters she was now leading the fight. In the final weeks before the Olympic competition, Mihambo had overcome the doubts and at the same time found a way to deal with the expectations. “I’m a good athlete and I like myself as a person. I don’t have to win gold to be happy, “said the 27-year-old. “Realizing that gave me the looseness in this final today.” In the last round, Mihambo looked liberated. The run-up did not work perfectly again, in the end the German jumped 19 centimeters too early, but there was so much energy in her body that she flew 7.19 meters – and was measured exactly seven meters. “I think that was one of the most exciting long jump finals ever,” said Mihambo later – and smiled.
.
