Dayron Robles

Career Highlights

2008 Beijing Olympics - Gold Medal

2008 World Record - 12.87s

2010 World Indoor Championships - Gold Medal

In life, we often have to negotiate hurdles, bumps in the road, obstacles to navigate, but it’s rare that ten in a row come at us at full speed.

One of the greatest hurdlers of all time, Dayron Robles, performed his event with as close to perfection as any, negotiating many of his races, including his Olympic win, without touching a single barrier,

Since the inaugural modern Olympics was founded in 1896, there have been 32 summer Olympiads, Paris 2024 will be the 33rd, and 27 Olympic champions in the event. Hailing from the mystical Caribbean Island of Cuba, land of sugar, rum, salsa and revolution, The 2008 champion in the 110m hurdles is an unassuming and charming athletics legend.

The sprint or high hurdles, as it is often known, is a uniquely challenging event which requires a range of athletic skills rare in any sport, that define some of the most outstanding, and often unheralded, sportsmen in the world. Negotiating ten hurdles, standing above the waistline of most adult men at 3’6” (1.06m), requires an exceptional combination of Speed, Power, Balance, Coordination, Flexibility and Bravery, to name a few.

Poetry in motion is often (over)used to describe elite sporting performance, particularly in athletics. To watch Dayron at his peak, gliding over the ten barriers, was to watch the prototypical athlete, combining all of those rare elite skills, at the very, very highest level.

Javier Sotomayor

Career Highlights

1988 World record – 2.43m – Salamanca, Spain

1989 World indoor record – 2.43m Budapest, Hungary

World record – 2.44m – San Juan, Puerto Rico

1989, 1991, 1993, 1995 World Indoor Championships – Gold medal

1992 Barcelona Olympics – Gold medal – Barcelona, Spain

1993 World Record – 2.45m – Salamanca, Spain

1993, 1995 World Championships – Gold medal

Javier Sotomayor is without doubt the greatest high jumper of all time.

Heralding from Cuba, “Soto” came to prominence in 1984 at the age of only 16, qualifying for the Olympics but missing the LA games due to Cuba’s boycott. He set his first world record in 1988, 4 days before the Olympics in Seoul, again missing his chance of an almost assured gold, following the boycott by the Cuban federation.

Winning his first global gold medal at the world indoor championships in Budapest in 1989, he set, what remains, the world indoor record, matching the height he achieved outdoors the previous year. He subsequently won three more world indoor championships.

Finally able to cement his status at the Olympic games, he took his chance at the first attempt to win Olympic gold in 1992 at the Barcelona Games, his iconic celebratory roar after his winning clearance of 2.34m, a memorable moment.

Soto won his first world outdoor title in 1993 in Stuttgart, again winning the title in Athens in 1997, also winning with silver medals in 1991 & 1995.

Probably considered one of his most legendary achievements is conquering the imperial 8 ft barrier of 2.44m in 1989, which he further raised to 2.45m in 1993, the record which remains today. To put this feat into perspective – Soto jumped over the equivalent of a regulation football goal crossbar!

He has held the world indoor and outdoor world records since 1989, some 35 years ago. A genuine global sporting legend!

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