A new record for Nafissatou Thiam

27/06/2019

Nafi Thiam won the Talence heptathlon, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics and then set a world record immediately afterwards. A new achievement for the Namur athlete!

Nafi Thiam made us all starry-eyed once again at the 2019 Decastar in Talence (France), an annual athletics competition that includes a men's decathlon and a women's heptathlon. Despite picking up an elbow injury whilst throwing the javelin, she won the competition with a score of 6,819 points, the best performance in the world this year. The Olympic champion has won a string of victories since her gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has now qualified for the Tokyo Games in 2020.

The icing on the cake is that the Namur athlete has set a world record for the heptathlon high jump, at 2.02 m. She is just a few centimetres short of the Belgian women's high jump record (not in the heptathlon) of 2.05 m, held by Tia Hellebaut, and the world record of 2.09 m set by the Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova.

Nafi Thiam produced the second-best performance of her career at the Decastar. Her personal record is 7,013 points, the third highest in the world ranking in this women's discipline, behind the American Jackie Joyner-Kersee (7,291 points) and the Swede Carolina Klüft (7,032 points). Let's hope our rising star of athletics continues to excite us with future victories!