Zango leaps into record books with world indoor triple jump mark

Burkina Faso athlete adds 15 centimetres to the previous record set by his own coach, Teddy Tamgho.

Zango warmed up with a leap of 17.33 metres before steadily increasing his best to 17.61 metres and then 17.70 metres [File: Reuters]

Hugues Fabrice Zango has become the first Burkinabe athlete to set a world record when he posted the longest ever indoor triple jump with a leap of 18.07 metres (59.28 feet).

At an event on Saturday in Aubiere, France, 27-year-old Zango added 15 centimetres (5.9 inches) to the previous record, set by his own coach, Frenchman Teddy Tamgho, in 2011.

“When the student surpasses his master!!!” tweeted Tamgho along with a photo of Zango stood in front of the meet’s results cart.

“We already knew that the record had to fall. Now we get back to work because we mustn’t stop there,” said Tamgho, who started coaching Zango in July 2018, three years after the jumper arrived in France to study electrical engineering at Bethune University.

Zango, who won bronze at the World Championships in 2019, started with a foul but warmed up with a leap of 17.33 metres (56.86 feet) before steadily increasing his best to 17.61 metres (57.78 feet) and then 17.70 metres (58.07 feet).

With his final effort, he floated beyond 18 metres to break his own previous lifetime best by 30cm (11.8 inches).

“Bravo champion,” Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Kabore said in a Facebook post.

“[Zango] holds the Burkinabe flag high, filling us with pride,” Kabore added. “I ask him to keep going in preparation for a brilliant performance at the next Olympic Games.”

Britain’s Jonathan Edwards holds the outdoor triple jump world record with a leap of 18.29 metres (60 feet) in Gothenburg in 1995.

Aside from Zango and Edwards, only five other athletes have gone beyond 18 metres: Americans Christian Taylor (18.21), Will Claye (18.14) and Kenny Harrison (18.09), Cuban Pedro Pablo Pichardo (18.08) and Tamgho (18.04).

Source: News Agencies