Yulimar Rojas, defending Olympic triple jump champion, rules herself out of Paris 2024 after suffering an Achilles tendon injury in training

Yulimar Rojas, the reigning Olympic women's triple jump champion, has announced that she will miss Paris 2024 due to an Achilles tendon injury.

The Venezuelan athlete posted to Facebook that 'my heart is broken' as she will not be able to defend the crown she won in Tokyo three years ago.

She broke the women’s triple jump world record and became the first female athlete from Venezuela to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games.

Rojas said that during a jump in a training session in Spain 'I felt an intense pain, which has been diagnosed as an injury to the left Achilles tendon'. 

She underwent surgery in Madrid to repair the tendon, and shared a picture of herself in a hospital bed. 

Rojas wrote: 'Today I feel very emotionally affected by not being able to represent them, the desire to defend my Olympic title excited me enormously.

'Today I have to stop, understand this, recover and come back with a lot of strength to continue flying together.'

She wished the Venezuelan Olympic delegation a lot of success without her, and added: 'See you soon, with the same dreams and desire.' 

The injury rules the world record holder out of the season, most notably the Olympics, which begin in Paris in July.  

The previous women's triple jump world record was 15.50m, held by Ukraine’s Inessa Kravets since 1995, but Rojas jumped 15.67m in winning gold at the 2020 Olympics.

It allowed Rojas to go one better than the silver medal she won at the previous Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Patricia Mamona from Portugal took silver in Tokyo, while Spain's Ana Peleteiro won bronze. 

Speaking after the 2021 Olympic event, Rojas said: 'I was looking for it, I knew we had that distance in my legs to get it today. I was failing a bit in the technical aspect but the last jump was one to give everything, and it was like that.

'I focused on giving my best, enjoying, and it came out.'

In 2022, Rojas was nominated for the Breakthrough of the Year prize at the Laureus Sports Awards for her efforts at Tokyo the previous year, which she lost to tennis player Emma Raducanu. 

Rojas extended her world record with a jump of 15.74m in 2022, and also owns four outdoor world titles, including the prize from Budapest last year.