Azaleah Campbell/ Contributor

National triple jump champion Jordan Scott is off to make his Olympic berth at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games after securing his spot on a qualification mark of 16.87 metres at the 2024 National Senior Championships, which was also the winning jump.

Much growth can be seen over the course of Scott’s career. He was a two-time Class 1 finalist in the triple jump at the Boys and Girls Championships, a sixth-place finisher in the IAAF World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz in July 2016, and a finalist in the 2014 Youth Olympic Games.

He later took his spikes to the University of Virginia (UVA), where he quickly proved himself to be the missing puzzle piece to the Virginia track success.

He broke both the indoor (16.36 metres) and outdoor (16.01 metres) Virginia records for triple jump in his freshman year, shattering a 45-year-old record in the latter and ranking him Number 2 of all-time in Virginia for the former.

He jumped his personal best of 17.08 metres at the Atlantic Coast Conference in May 2019, making him the Virginia school record-holder in the triple jump.

Scott helped UVA land a second-place finish at the indoor ACC championships at the Notre Dame, and earned first place in the individual triple jump event, while placing eighth in the long jump.

The Jamaican then came 10th in the triple jump at the NCAA indoor championships, earning him second team All-American honors.

The 27-year-old soon after transferred to the University of Southern California (USC) with one season of eligibility left, where he went on to win the 2019 NCAA indoor triple jump title on a jump of 16.89 metres and finish as a runner-up at the 2019 NCAA outdoor championships with a jump of 17.01 metres.

Scott now holds five ACC jumps titles and has been named the 2019 and 2020 USTFCCCA Southeast Region Indoor Field Athlete of the Year and the 2019 Southeast Region Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year.

The National Triple-Jump Champion will go up against the likes of Pedro Pichardo, Jordan Diaz, and Hugues Fabrice Zango at the Olympics and begin his hunt for gold on Wednesday, August 7, 2024.