Paris Olympics: Tara Davis-Woodhall wins gold for Team USA in women’s long jump

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SAINT-DENIS, France — Tara Davis-Woodhall, a bubbly, cowboy hat-wearing American long-jumper, won a joyous gold medal here at the 2024 Olympics on a jam-packed Thursday night of track and field.

She jumped 7.10 meters, blowing away a reigning Olympic champ and the rest of the field to claim her first Olympic title — and first Olympic medal of any kind.

Germany’s Malaika Mihambo, the defending gold medalist and a two-time world champ, took silver with a best jump of 6.98. Team USA’s Jasmine Moore took bronze at 6.96, and became the first woman in a while to win medals in long jump and triple jump (also bronze) at the same Games.

The star of the event, though, was Davis-Woodhall, a social media sensation who energized the crowd from the moment she strutted out of a tunnel here at Stade de France and onto the track.

Six jumps later, she stretched her arms wide, and fell back into the long-jump pit, overwhelmed by emotion. She did a few sand angels. Then she found her husband, Paralympian Hunter Woodhall, in the stands and leapt up into his arms.

Davis-Woodhall, now 25, made her Olympic debut in Tokyo. She finished sixth, which nowadays would be a letdown; but at the time, it was a launching pad.

“I did not expect to be in Tokyo,” she recently recalled. “I was a college kid out there just jumping for fun.”

She realized, over subsequent years, that she could be something more. She won her first senior national title at indoor championships in 2023 (though she was later stripped of the title after testing positive for cannabis). She took silver at world championships that summer.

She entered 2024 as a medal favorite. But her runway to Paris was anything but smooth. She said she took three weeks off from jumping to nurse “a really gnarly bone bruise in my heel.” She qualified first at U.S. trials with a jump of 7 meters flat, but only after a scare; the heel hadn’t healed.

“I’m still dealing with it,” Davis-Woodhall said here in France. “But we live and we learn, and we’re just gonna go out here and do what we can do.”

She opened here Thursday night with a 6.93. After one jump apiece, Moore, her fellow American, was a few centimeters better. But in the second round, Davis-Woodhall exploded past the 7-meter mark to 7.05, and established herself as a clear leader in the clubhouse.

Mihambo got to 6.95 in Round 3, 0.01 behind Moore and a full tenth behind Davis-Woodhall. But she overstepped the foul line in Round 4. Davis-Woodhall, jumping immediately afterward, bettered herself with a 7.10 and extended her lead, which she held through all six rounds to claim gold.