Former world record holder Willie Banks

The triple jump (sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or, incorrectly, the hop, skip and jump) is a track and field sport, similar to the long jump, but involving a “hop, bound and jump” routine, whereby the competitor runs down the track and performs a hop, a bound and then a jump into the sand pit.

The triple jump has its origins in the Ancient Olympics and has been a modern Olympics event since the Games’ inception in 1896.

The current male and female world record holders are Jonathan Edwards of Great Britain, with a jump of 18.29 metres (60.0 ft), and Inessa Kravets of Ukraine, with a jump of 15.5 metres (51 ft).

History[link]

The triple jump, or at least a variant involving three jumps one after the other, has its roots in the Ancient Greek Olympics, with records showing athletes attaining distances of more than 50 feet (15.24 m).^[1]

In Irish mythology the geal-ruith (triple jump), was an event contested in the ancient Irish Tailteann Games as early as 1829 B.C.^[2]

The triple jump was a part of the inaugural 1896 Olympics in Athens, although back then it consisted of two hops on the same foot and then a jump. In fact, the first modern Olympic champion, James Connolly, was a triple jumper. Early Olympics also included the standing triple jump, although this has since been removed from the Olympic program and is rarely performed in competition today. The women’s triple jump was introduced into the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

Technique[link]

The athlete sprints down a runway to a takeoff mark, from which the triple jump is measured. The takeoff mark is commonly a physical piece of wood or similar material embedded in the runway, or a rectangle painted on the runway surface. In modern championships a strip of plasticine, tape, or modeling clay is attached to the far edge of the board to record athletes overstepping or "scratching" the mark, defined by the trailing edge of the board. There are three phases of the triple jump: the "hop" phase, the "bound" or "step" phase, and the "jump" phase. These three phases are executed in one continuous sequence.

Phillips Idowu at the 2008 Summer Olympics

The hop starts with the athlete jumping from the take off board on one leg, which for descriptive purposes will be the right leg. The objective of the first phase is to hop out, focusing all momentum forward. The hop landing phase is very active, involving a powerful backward "pawing" action of the right leg, with the right take-off foot landing heel first on the runway. In the step, the athlete utilises the backward momentum of the right leg to immediately execute a powerful jump forwards and upwards, the left leg assisting the take-off with a powerful hip flexion thrust. This leads to the familiar triple jump mid-air position, with the right take off leg trailing flexed at the knee and the left leg now leading flexed at the hip and knee. The jumper then holds this position for as long as possible, before extending the knee of the leading left leg and then immediately beginning a powerful backward motion of the whole left leg, again landing on the runway with a powerful pawing action. The step is followed by the jump, where the athlete jumps from the left leg to land in a sand-filled pit. The jump phase is very similar to the long jump although most athletes have lost too much speed by this time to manage a full hitch kick, and most use a hang or sail technique. In the landing the jumper should aim to avoid sitting back on landing, or placing either hand behind the feet. Each phase of the triple jump should get progressively higher.

A "foul", also known as a "scratch," or missed jump, occurs when a jumper oversteps the takeoff mark, misses the pit entirely, does not use the correct foot sequence throughout the phases, or does not perform the attempt in the allotted amount of time (usually about 90 seconds). When a jumper "scratches," the seated official will raise a red flag and the jumper who was "on deck," or up next, prepares to jump.

Records[link]

Note: As in all track-and-field events, results cannot count towards records if they are Wind assisted (>2.0 m/s).

Outdoor[link]

Area	Men's		Women's
	Mark (m)	Athlete	Mark (m)	Athlete
World	18.29	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	15.50	Inessa Kravets (UKR)
Continental records
Africa	17.37	Tarik Bouguetaïb (MAR)	15.39	Françoise Mbango Etone (CMR)
Asia	17.59	Yanxi Li (CHN)	15.25	Olga Rypakova (KAZ)
Europe	18.29	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	15.50	Inessa Kravets (UKR)
North, Central America and Caribbean	18.09	Kenny Harrison (USA)	15.29	Yamilé Aldama (CUB)
Oceania	17.46	Ken Lorraway (AUS)	14.04	Nicole Mladenis (AUS)
South America	17.90	Jadel Gregório (BRA)	14.99	Caterine Ibargüen (COL)

• Updated 13 August 2011.^[3]

Top ten performers[link]

Accurate as of September, 2011.

Men[link]

Outdoor

NB: These are the top 10 performers of all time, not the top 10 performances. Other legal jumps by people on this list that would exceed the shortest jump on this list are noted below the table.

Mark	Wind	Athlete	Venue	Date
18.29 1	1.3	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Gothenburg	August 7, 1995
18.09 2	-0.4	Kenny Harrison (USA)	Atlanta	July 27, 1996
17.98 3	1.2	Teddy Tamgho (FRA)	New York City	June 12, 2010
17.97	1.5	Willie Banks (USA)	Indianapolis	June 16, 1985
17.96	0.1	Christian Taylor (USA)	Daegu	September 4, 2011
17.92	1.6	Khristo Markov (BUL)	Rome	August 31, 1987
17.92	1.9	James Beckford (JAM)	Odessa	May 20, 1995
17.90	0.4	Jadel Gregório (BRA)	Belém	May 20, 2007
17.90	1.0	Volodymyr Inozemtsev (URS)	Bratislava	June 20, 1990
17.89	0.0	João Carlos de Oliveira (BRA)	Mexico City	October 15, 1975

• ¹ Edwards also has legal jumps of 18.16, 18.01, 18.00, 17.99, 17.98 and 17.92m. As of August 2011, he has six of the top 10 jumps of all time. The longest wind aided jump of 18.43(+2.4) was also performed by Edwards.
• ² Harrison also has legal jumps of 17.99 m and 17.93 m.
• ³ Tamgho also has legal jump of 17.91 m

Indoor^[4]

Mark	Athlete	Venue	Date
17.92	Teddy Tamgho (FRA)	Paris	March 6, 2011
17.83	Aliecer Urrutia (CUB)	Sindelfingen	March 1, 1997
17.83	Christian Olsson (SWE)	Budapest	March 7, 2004
17.77	Leonid Voloshin (RUS)	Grenoble	February 2, 1994
17.76	Mike Conley (USA)	New York City	February 22, 1987
17.75	Phillips Idowu (GBR)	Valencia	March 9, 2008
17.74	Marian Oprea (ROU)	Bucharest	February 18, 2006
17.73	Fabrizio Donato (ITA)	Paris	March 6, 2011
17.73	Walter Davis (USA)	Moskow	March 12, 2006
17.72	Brian Wellman (BER)	Barcelona	March 12, 2005

Women[link]

NB: Again, these are the top 10 performers of all time, not the top 10 performances.

Mark	Wind	Athlete	Venue	Date
15.50 1	0.9	Inessa Kravets (UKR)	Gothenburg	August 10, 1995
15.39 2	0.5	Françoise Mbango Etone (CMR)	Beijing	August 17, 2008
15.34 3	-0.5	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)	Heraklion	July 4, 2004
15.32 4	0.9	Hrysopiyi Devetzi (GRE)	Athens	August 21, 2004
15.29 5	0.3	Yamilé Aldama (CUB)	Rome	July 11, 2003
15.28	0.9	Yargelis Savigne (CUB)	Osaka	August 31, 2007
15.25	1.7	Olga Rypakova (KAZ)	Split	September 4, 2010
15.20	0.0	Šárka Kašpárková (CZE)	Athens	August 4, 1997
15.20	-0.3	Tereza Marinova (BUL)	Sydney	September 24, 2000
15.18	0.3	Iva Prandzheva (BUL)	Gothenburg	August 10, 1995

• ¹ Kravets also has a legal jump of 15.33 m.
• ² Mbango Etone also has legal jumps of 15.30 and 15.19 m.
• ³ Lebedeva also has legal jumps of 15.33, 15.32, 15.25, 15.23 and 15.18 m.
• ⁴ Devetzi also has legal jumps of 15.25, 15.23 and 15,22 m.
• ⁵ Aldama also has legal jumps of 15.28, 15.27 and 15.21 m.

Best year performance[link]

Men's season's best[link]

Year	Distance (m)	Athlete	Place
1970	17.34	Viktor Saneyev (URS)	Suhumi
1971	17.40	Pedro Pérez (CUB)	Cali
1972	17.44	Viktor Saneyev (URS)	Suhumi
1973	17.20	Mikhail Bariban (URS)	Moscow
1974	17.23	Viktor Saneyev (URS)	Rome
1975	17.89	João Carlos de Oliveira (BRA)	Mexico City
1976	17.38	João Carlos de Oliveira (BRA)	Rio de Janeiro
1977	17.19	Ron Livers (USA)	Sochi
1978	17.44	João Carlos de Oliveira (BRA)	Bratislava
1979	17.27	João Carlos de Oliveira (BRA)	San Juan
1980	17.35	Jaak Uudmäe (URS)	Moscow
1981	17.56	Willie Banks (USA)	Sacramento
1982	17.57	Keith Connor (GBR)	Provo
1983	17.55	Vasiliy Grishchenkov (URS)	Moscow
1984	17.46	Oleg Protsenko (URS)	Moscow
1985	17.97	Willie Banks (USA)	Indianapolis
1986	17.80	Khristo Markov (BUL)	Budapest
1987	17.92	Khristo Markov (BUL)	Rome
1988	17.77	Khristo Markov (BUL)	Sofia
1989	17.62	Volodymyr Inozemtsev (URS)	Gorkiy
1990	17.93	Kenny Harrison (USA)	Stockholm
1991	17.78	Kenny Harrison (USA)	Tokyo
1992	17.72	Mike Conley (USA)	Zürich
1993	17.86	Mike Conley (USA)	Stuttgart
1994	17.68	Mike Conley (USA)	Paris
1995	18.29	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Gothenburg
1996	18.09	Kenny Harrison (USA)	Atlanta
1997	17.85	Yoelbi Quesada (CUB)	Athens
1998	18.01	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Oslo
1999	17.59	Charles Friedek (GER)	Seville
2000	17.71	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Sydney
2001	17.92	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Edmonton
2002	17.86	Jonathan Edwards (GBR)	Manchester
2003	17.77	Christian Olsson (SWE)	Haina
2004	17.79	Christian Olsson (SWE)	Athens
2005	17.81	Marian Oprea (ROM)	Lausanne
2006	17.71	Walter Davis (USA)	Indianapolis
2007	17.90	Jadel Gregório (BRA)	Belém
2008	17.67	Nelson Évora (POR)	Beijing
2009	17.73	Phillips Idowu (GBR)	Berlin
2010	17.98	Teddy Tamgho (FRA)	New York City
2011	17.96	Christian Taylor (USA)	Daegu

Women's seasons best[link]

Year	Distance (m)	Athlete	Place
1986	13.68	Esmeralda García (BRA)	Indianapolis
1987	14.04	Li Huirong (CHN)	Hamamatsu
1988	14.16	Li Huirong (CHN)	Shijiazhuang
1989	14.52	Galina Chistyakova (URS)	Stockholm
1990	14.54	Li Huirong (CHN)	Sapporo
1991	14.95	Inessa Kravets (URS)	Moscow
1992	14.62	Galina Chistyakova (RUS)	Villeneuve d'Ascq
1993	15.09	Anna Biryukova (RUS)	Stuttgart
1994	14.98	Sofiya Bozhanova (BUL)	Stara Zagora
1995	15.50	Inessa Kravets (UKR)	Gothenburg
1996	15.33	Inessa Kravets (UKR)	Sacramento
1997	15.20	Šárka Kašpárková (CZE)	Athens
1998	15.12	Iva Prandzheva (BUL)	Tokyo
1999	15.07	Paraskevi Tsiamita (GRE)	Seville
2000	15.32	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)	Yokohama
2001	15.25	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)	Edmonton
2002	14.95	Françoise Mbango Etone (CMR)	Radès
2003	15.29	Yamilé Aldama (CUB)	Rome
2004	15.34	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)	Iraklion
2005	15.11	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)  Trecia Smith (JAM)	Paris Helsinki
2006	15.23	Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS)	Athens
2007	15.28	Yargelis Savigne (CUB)	Osaka
2008	15.39	Françoise Mbango Etone (CMR)	Beijing
2009	15.14	Nadezhda Alekhina (RUS)	Cheboksary
2010	15.25	Olga Rypakova (KAZ)	Split

Other famous triple jumpers[link]

• Ashia Hansen
• Vilho Tuulos
• Aliecer Urrutia
• Marija Sestak
• Adhemar da Silva
• Nelson Prudêncio

References[link]

See also[link]

• Triple jump world record progression

Kola Adedoyin

Personal information
Nationality	British
Born	(1991-04-08) April 8, 1991 (age 21)
Height	6 ft 2 in (188 cm)
Weight	175 lb (79 kg)
Sport
Country	United Kingdom
Sport	Track and field
Event(s)	Triple jump
Club	Newham & Essex
Coached by	Frank Attoh

Kola Adedoyin (born April 8, 1991) is a British track and field athlete who competes in the triple jump and has a personal record of 16.06 metres. Kola is the 2012 UK Indoor Champion.^[1]

Career[link]

Born in Montgomery County, Maryland, he moved to England as a 5 year old and attended The Royal Alexandra and Albert School from 2002-2007 and captained their fooball, basketball and athletics team. After taking bronze at the 2005 English Schools Championships^[2] he started training with former Great Britain International John Vernon at Sutton Arena. He made a big breakthrough in 2007 jumping in the under 17 top ten all time list with 15.08, winning medals at all the national u17 championships that year.^[3]

Adedoyin went on to attend Kingston College in 2007 however his first year as a junior athlete was ruined by a knee injury. He bounced back in 2009 with a personal best of 15.63 winning the 2009 English Schools Senior Boys Title, whilst also winning his first Great Britain Junior Call up for the European Athletics Junior Championships.^[4] In September 2009 Adedoyin joined an illustrious list of British athletes such as Iwan Thomas, Tony Adams and James Cracknell by attending Brunel University and consequently moved coach to well respected international Coach Frank Attoh. In 2010 Adedoyin won his first UK Senior medal with a bronze medal at the Indoor Championships ^[5] and followed that up with qualification for the World Junior Championships at Loughborough International with a distance of 15.93 breaking the surrey county junior and senior record. Disaster again struck a couple of weeks later when he ruptured ankle ligaments in Geneva, Switzerland 6 weeks before the World Junior Championships. After much hard work he managed to pass a fitness test, and went on to the World Juniors qualifying for the final on his final jump, unfortunately his ankle did not hold up, nad was forced to pull out of final by team doctors. He finished summer 2010 as Great Britain No1 Junior Outdoors.

The Start of the 2011 Season was again marred by an ankle ligament rupture in December however Adedoyin finished the season as the British Under 23 Champion and No1. Jumping a personal best of 16.06 at Bedford in June and also made his Great Britain Senior team Debut at the European Team Championships 2011. 2012 started well Winning his first UK Indoor Title.

Personal bests[link]

• All information taken from IAAF profile.

See also[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

References[link]

External links[link]

• http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/248227-2012-Aviva-World-Trials-UK-Championships/video/602000-2012-National-Indoor-Triple-Jump-Champion-Kola-Adedoyin
• http://www.thepowerof10.info/athletes/profile.aspx?athleteid=27548
• http://www.englandathletics.org/news.asp?itemTitle=England+top+of+the+class+at+Loughborough&section=42&sectionTitle=England+Athletics+News&itemid=3706
• http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=gbr/athcode=251934/index.html
• http://www.iaaf.org/Mini/WIC12/News/NewsDetail.aspx?id=63562
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2003243/Adedoyin-hops-Phillips-Idowu-skips-European-Team-Championships.html
• http://coaching.uka.org.uk/coaching/year-of-the-coach/futures-programme-athlete-interviews/kola-adedoyin-focus-on-futures/