PARIS.- Twenty months after his last competition and eleven months after the breakage of Achilles that left him without Olympicsthe Venezuelan athlete Yulimar Rojas He finally returns, this Sunday in Salamanca (Spain).
It will not be, however, in the triple jump, the discipline where its legend has built and where it is the worldwide plusmarchist (15.74 m), but in the long jump.
The objective: a gradual return to go stage to stage.
“The Venezuelan will reappear in the discipline of length and not in her triple jumping star discipline, to which it will be gradually reinstated,” FC Barcelona explained on Friday in a statement in which he announced the renewal of the jumper with its athletic section until December 2026.
A long viacrucis
But seeing Yulimar Rojas in the long jump is not something so strange and she herself was to make double in the Paris Games, until the serious injury suffered in a training in April made her pass the year 2024 blank.
With the “broken heart” he had to announce his breakage in the Achilles tendon of the left foot, which forced him to go through an operating room in a Madrid clinic.
The injury occurred on April 10, when I already thought about the beginning of the large outdoor meetings, after not having participated in the season on covered track to reserve forces for Paris.
But in an instant he had to wake up from the Olympic dream, three years after having hung the gold in Tokyo in 2021.
Calvary lasts since then, but often without losing the smile.
He was seen thus accompanying the members of the Venezuelan Olympic delegation in the opening of the Games at the end of July and in September he published a video announcing his return to the training, in which he advanced along the track dancing.
“I meet with the athletics track dancing with positivism and much joy (…) It doesn’t matter how long or hard the way, with effort, faith and illusion dreams come true,” he then wrote on Instagram.
Since then, far from the media spotlights, fans were concerned with knowing when they could see the Venezuelan star again jumping in the tartan.
From Eugene to Salamanca
Salamanca has been the chosen place. A Spanish city that is part of the history of athletics because there the Cuban Javier Sotomayor beat in 1993 the record of the high jump world with 2.45 meters outdoors. A plusmarca that is still standing.
This time the appointment is under roof, in the middle of winter, in the I Trophy City of Salamanca, a competition where Rojas is the great claim, starting with the poster of the event.
“The presence of Yulimar Rojas is going to make Salamanca appear worldwide on Sunday and Monday,” the provincial athletics delegate, Casimiro Blanco, took pride in this week.
Rojas’ last competition was in September 2023 in Eugene (United States), at the closing of the Diamond League of that year.
To see him competing in long jump, you have to go back to July 2023, in Monaco, also in the Diamond League.
In the long jump, the best approved brand of the Venezuelan is 6.88 m that jumped in 2021. On the covered track, it reached 6.81 meters in the past, in 2022.
But on Sunday, beyond the distance you reach, Rojas can already be seen as the winner feeling again athlete.
