16 Facts About Yulimar Rojas

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

In 2021, Yulimar 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 Rodriguez, that one day she would buy her a small house with walls, and strove to be able to make good on that promise.

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

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

Yulimar Rojas then took silver in the event at the 2015 Military World Games.

Yulimar Rojas became the first Venezuelan woman to win an Olympic medal, doing so in the same event in which the nation had won their very first Olympic medal with Devonish's 1952 bronze.

The national reaction to her medal was overwhelming; Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro boasted on television that the country was becoming a "sporting superpower" and fulfilling its 2008 promise of a "generation of gold", despite Yulimar Rojas's silver being the highest accolade of their three medals.

On 7 August 2017, Yulimar Rojas won her first outdoor World Championship, winning against Ibarguen and becoming the first Venezuelan athlete in history to obtain a gold medal in the championships.

Yulimar Rojas said that the win "came at both the best and the worst moment for Venezuela", hoping that having a world champion could bring hope to Venezuela, which was in the midst of the 2017 Venezuelan protests.

Yulimar Rojas spent much of 2018 off due to injury, during which Ibarguen led the sport, then returned to competing in 2019.

On 1 August 2021, Yulimar Rojas won the gold medal at Tokyo 2020.

At the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Yulimar Rojas jumped 15.08 metres on her final attempt to overtake Ukraine's Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk and claim her fourth world title.

Yulimar Rojas underwent surgery after suffering an Achilles injury during a training session in Spain in April 2024 and announced she would miss the Paris Olympics as a result.

Yulimar Rojas was named the 2017 World Athletics Rising Star, and was a finalist for the 2019 World Athlete of the Year honour.

Yulimar Rojas was nominated for the 2022 Laureus World Sports Award for Breakthrough of the Year, which was won by British tennis player Emma Raducanu.

Yulimar Rojas was chosen as one of the BBC's 100 women for 2022.