Tuğba Danışmaz

Happy birthday to Türkiye’s triple jump star Tuğba Danışmaz, the woman who won a European title on Turkish soil and then went and got the national record too.

March 2023, Ataköy Arena, Istanbul: the first European Athletics Indoor Championships ever staged in Turkiye, and Tuğba jumped 14.31m to win the gold medal in front of her own people. Fifteen months later, in the outdoor European final in Rome, she went out to 14.57m for the silver medal and a Turkish record. This year she was back in a European final in Birmingham, jumping 14.33m for fifth, and last summer she made the World Championship final in Tokyo. Before all of it there was a European U23 title in Tallinn, a European U23 silver in Gävle and a World University Games gold in Chengdu.

That is six straight years of arriving at global finals and staying in them, in an event where the difference between a medal and eighth place is often the width of a takeoff board.

The triple jump does something to the human body that nothing else in athletics does. Three landings, each one taking many times bodyweight, all of it on the same leg, all of it while trying to keep running. Athletes who hold that together for a decade are rare, and the ones who do it while carrying a country’s expectations are rarer.

İyi ki doğdun, Tuğba! Sağlıklı, mutlu nice yıllara. Helal olsun! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇹🇷