Yulimar Rojas

Yulimar Rojas Rodríguez (also known as Yolimar Rojas; born 21 October 1995) is a Venezuelan athlete who holds the world record for women's triple jump, at.

Inspired by the Venezuelan delegation at the 2008 Summer Olympics, Rojas, a tall child, wanted to become a volleyball player, but there was no nearby team.

She also played basketball, but similarly could not find coaches.

Rojas was accepted to a specialist sports school and her stepfather, former boxer Pedro Zapata, told her to try athletics rather than volleyball.

She was also encouraged to try athletics under coach Jesús "Tuqueque" Velásquez at the Simón Bolívar Sports Complex in Puerto la Cruz.

Velásquez told AFP that, though the stadium was financed by the government at the time, Rojas and other young athletes had to help dig the sandpit where they could practice jumps, under a jujube tree.

The Simón Bolívar Sports Complex is part of the facilities of the José Antonio Anzoátegui Stadium; two of Rojas's sisters, Yerilda and Yorgelys Zapata, are also athletes, and train in throwing events at this stadium.

Rojas's first athletic event was shot put, and while she won her first competition she chose to explore other sports.

Aged 15 she entered her first high jump competition.

She has cited triple jumper Asnoldo Devonish, Venezuela's only athletics Olympic medalist prior to Rojas herself, as an inspiration in her development.

Showing young promise, Rojas was invited to international competitions, but her estranged father would not give permission for her to leave the country until there was a championship held in neighboring Colombia, the 2011 South American Junior Championships.

The event was Rojas's first high jump competition, and, aged 15, she won the event and set a new national youth record, ranking #11 in the world that year.

Due to this win, she received her first spike shoes, given to her by Marco Oviedo of the Venezuelan Athletics Federation (FVA) after her coach Velásquez challenged the FVA to start supporting her if she won.

An appearance in the horizontal jumps followed at the World Junior Championships, where she came 11th in the long jump and 17th overall in the triple jump.

She won her first gold medal in the long jump Pan American Sports Festival that year and, in recognition, she was chosen to lead the returning delegation back to Venezuela and was presented with a national flag by Tony Álvarez, the Minister of Youth and Sports.

She was then defeated at the 2012 Youth championships, managing only fourth, but performed better in higher-level competitions that year, jumping to take sixth at the Ibero-American Championships and claiming the bronze medal at the South American Under-23 Championships.

In the 2013 season, she improved her personal best to with a high jump in Barquisimeto, taking the South American junior record.

She also registered a long jump and an 11.94s 100m sprint.

This year she won two international silver medals, at the 2013 Pan American Junior Athletics Championships (losing to Daniellys Garay on countback) and the Bolivarian Games.

At the Bolivarian Games she competed in the long jump for the first time, placing sixth.

Improving in her new event, she had a best of in long jump that year.

Since 2014 she has held, and continued to beat, Venezuelan national records in triple jump and long jump.

She is a recipient of the Venezuelan Order of José Félix Ribas – First Class.

Raised in a deprived area of Venezuela, Rojas was successful in other sports as a teenager but struggled to practice due to lack of resources.

Encouraged to move into athletics, she excelled in high jump and sprinting before developing an affinity for the triple jump.

Their ranchito has since been destroyed in bad weather; the family was given better housing in 2014 following Rojas's success.

In 2021, Rojas told RTVE that she had grown up only seeking to have some dignity in life, but, after she began competing, she had promised her mother, Yulecsy Rodríguez, that one day she would buy her a small house with walls, and strove to be able to make good on that promise.

Rojas then began regularly competing in both horizontal and vertical jump events from 2014.

Starting with the South American Games in March, she claimed her first senior gold medal in the high jump.

A long jump/triple jump double followed at the 2014 South American Under-23 Championships in Athletics, which included a championship record of in the long jump.

At senior level, she narrowly missed out on medals in both disciplines at the 2014 Central American and Caribbean Games, placing fourth in each.

She said that she became more attracted to the triple jump in 2014, and convinced Velásquez to let her change primary discipline.

Shortly thereafter, she took the Venezuelan under-20 record, achieving.

The FVA said that she was a promising natural athlete, noting her unique style of not taking a proper step and believing she could jump much further if taught proper technique.

She moved to Guadalajara, Spain, in 2015 to continue her athletics training under coach Iván Pedroso, and became dominant in the event.

After several years specialising only in the triple jump, she began seriously competing in the long jump again in 2021.

Yulimar Rojas Rodríguez was born in Caracas and raised in a ranchito (shack, ) in the Altavista area of Pozuelos, Anzoátegui; her family had moved there so that her stepfather could find work in the oil industry.

She is one of six siblings, and has said that growing up in a large, poor family gave her drive to overcome adversities, which helped her career.

Her early coaches reflected that, despite being talented and persevering, Rojas could not have become a successful athlete if she had not left the country in 2015, as she would not have had access to food and medical treatment to stay healthy.

She is the current Olympic champion, a four-time World Champion (2017 London, 2019 Doha, 2022 Eugene and 2023 Budapest), and three-time World Indoor Champion (2016 Portland, 2018 Birmingham and 2022 Belgrade); she is nicknamed la reina del triple salto – queen of the triple jump.