Following Thiam’s switch two Belgian stars will now grace the long jump, with Thiam joining fellow heptathlete Noor Vidts. But the high jump can still boast a world class line-up, with world champion Eleanor Patterson taking on vice world champion and European champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh.<\/p>\n
“I really wouldn’t want to miss the Memorial. I think it’s fantastic to be able to compete in front of my home crowd tomorrow, in a packed stadium,” Thiam added at the Thursday press conference. <\/p>\n
Thiam was joined by heptathlon world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who was officially inducted into the Allianz Memorial Van Damme Hall of Fame on Wednesday night and held a long jump clinic for kids in Vilvoorde, a town near Brussels.<\/p>\n
“After a long and hard season the long jump is less straining than the high jump, Joyner-Kersee agreed. “The hardest part about being a heptathlete is staying fit. Nafi is an amazing athlete and person and a real competitor. She doesn’t let her head drop when she faces adversity, but she keeps pushing even harder. She seems like she’s perfectly balanced, you don’t see her get stressed.”<\/p>\n
Can Thiam break JJK’s record?<\/strong><\/p>\n The question is whether Thiam can one day break the world record which ‘JJK’ set at a daunting 7291 points in 1988. “I’ve only managed to reach 7000 points once in my career,” Thiam said modestly. “Then 7300 points is still a long way away. I don’t go to bed and wake up thinking I need to break the world record. Maybe it’ll happen, maybe it won’t. I really just want to get above 7000 points again.”<\/p>\n Joyner-Kersee added: “Yes, Nafi can break the world record. She has a great team and a lot of self belief. She is very strong in all the disciplines, she jumps over two metres, can jump 6m90, and one day she’ll go below 2:10 on the 800 metres. On the heptathlon there’s always a chance you unexpectedly rise above yourself on a particular discipline. I really believe she can do it.”<\/p>\n When asked what Thiam envies the most about JJK’s abilities, she replied: “I would love to have her speed, but of course it doesn’t work like that. Heptathlon is not a video game where you choose your abilities. The only thing you can do is keep working hard. The fact that a legend like Jackie is so complimentary about me and believes so much in me is really nice. It’s a great encouragement for me to work even harder in the future. But first I want to enjoy the Memorial tomorrow!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nafi Thiam will take part in the long jump competition at Friday’s Allianz Memorial Van...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brussels"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.wdl.uat-sports.swisstiming.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}