Tatyana Lebedeva - Early Career

Early Career

Her first successes came in the triple jump in 2000, when she won European Indoor gold medal and a silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She became the World Champion the following year in addition to a silver medal at the world indoors. After retaining her triple jump title at the 2003 World Championships, she decided to take up the long jump as well. The move paid dividends: she broke the indoor world record in the triple jump at the 2004 World Indoor Championships and won a second gold in the long jump with a mark of 15.36. She won her first Olympic gold medal in the long jump event at the 2004 Athens Olympics and also won the bronze in the triple jump competition.

In 2005, she missed the World Championships due to injury, but became the sole winner of the IAAF Golden League jackpot, a bonus of USD 1 million awarded to athletes who win their event at each of six designated European summer meets. That year, she concentrated on the triple jump.

An injury forced her out of the 2005 World Championships but she excelled on the IAAF Golden League circuit: she went undefeated and received the entire jackpot prize of US$1 million. She became European champion for the first time with a win at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in the triple jump. Lebedeva reached the podium twice at the 2007 World Championships taking long jump gold and triple jump silver, and she earned two silver medals in her disciplines at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She won the long jump silver medal at the 2009 World Championships (her eighth medal on the world podium), although she could not match this form in the triple jump.