Tamgho eyes king Edwards’ world mark

Maybe it was a good thing that world outdoor triple jump champion Phillips Idowu stayed away from the European indoor championships.

The Briton steered clear of the Paris meet in fear that a defeat to Teddy Tamgho would hand the Frenchman too big a psychological boost ahead of this year’s world championships in Daegu and the 2012 Olympics in London.

Tamgho certainly did not disappoint, thrilling a packed Parisian crowd by twice jumping 17.92 metres, a mark which beat his previous world indoor record by 1cm.

The 21-year-old, born in the unfashionable north Paris surburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois which rose to international prominence as one of the centres of the French suburb riots in 2005, has certainly come a long way fast.

He missed the cut for the France team for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games after achieving the standard three days after deadline.

A year later, he didn’t even qualify for the Euro indoors final in Turin, and then came in 11th in the 2009 world outdoors in Berlin.

But he came of age in Doha in March 2010, finally carrying through his junior promise by storming to a world record in the Qatar capital en route to the world indoor crown.

His record-setting victory at Bercy on Sunday over Italian Fabrizio Donato was also a turning point in his progression, he admitted.

“Jumps of 17.90m are no longer out of the norm for me. Now that makes two bonuses for world records, my banker will be happy!” Tamgho said.

When Donato landed his lead jump on his second effort, Tamgho said he “knew he could go further”.

“If someone had jumped 17.93m, I would have pulled off a big jump. But the goal was the gold medal and nothing more.”

Tamgho infamously approached world record holder Jonathan Edwards and told him he was going to break the mark of 18.29m the Briton set in Gothenburg in 1995.

“He came up to me in Turin in the Euro indoors. I was in the hotel lobby doing interviews and he said, half-jokingly: ‘You don’t know me but I’m Teddy Tamgho and I’m going to beat your record’,” recalls Edwards.

“He then went on to have a terrible championships, but I saw him in Paris a few months later and he was completely charming and we even analysed each other’s jumping technique.”

Tamgho has jumped 17.98m outdoors, to put him third in the all-time list after Edwards and American Kenny Harrison (18.03m), and the Briton believes there are similarities between his jumping style and that of the Frenchman.

“Like me when I was when jumping, he’s not a really big guy, but he’s extremely quick on the run-up. He’s very athletic and his key attribute is the balance in the jumps.

“Most of his competitors are more powerful but also slower. They lose speed on the approach and then their balance, which Teddy does not.

“His 17.98m was the best since one of mine in Budapest in 1998. In my mind, he’s the triple jumper who has the best chance of beating my record.”