Malaika Mihambo won the long jump gold in Karlsruhe with new meeting record and season’s best

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics long jump champion Malaika Mihambo smashed the competition and won the gold at the INIT Indoor Meeting Karlsruhe. The German athlete jumped 7.07m, improving the meeting record and topping the season’s best in the world.

Malaika Mihambo jumped 7.07m from her fourth attempt, while before that she had only 6.08m from her second one. Thus, she improved the meeting record of 7.06m of Heike Drechsler (Germany) and the season’s best in the long jump of 6.98m of Anthaya Charlton (Bahamas).

Second in the women’s long jump at the INIT Indoor Meeting Karlsruhe was Mikaelle Assani (Germany), who reached 6.79m in her last attempt. The German athlete did not made a single foul at her jumps, recording 6.49m, 6.67m, 6.51m, 6.64m and 6.51m, before making her final jump to cover 6.79m and win the silver.

The bronze was for Bulgarian athletics talent Plamena Mitkova, who finished with 6.69m from her third attempt and was shortly leading in the event before the fourth jump of the Malaika Mihambo and just in the final round lost the second position. Unfortunately, Plamena Mitkova did not record any other successful jump.

The Top 5 was completed by Fatima Diame (Spain) with 6.59m and Milica Gardasevic (Serbia) with 6.44m.

The competition was the first with the new experimental rules in the long jump. The athletes now take off from a wider zone instead of the traditional take-off board. This new 40-centimetre take-off zone was introduced by World Athletics to reduce the number of invalid attempts (around 30%) that have been common in recent years. Thus rule was highly opposed by the top long jumpers and received a lot of criticism during the last days.