Long jumper on making her first Olympic Games, after retiring from the sport, the importance of her Christian faith and channelling pain into resilience 

Abigail Irozuru will soon be travelling to take part in her first Olympic Games after she finished second at the Müller  British Championships, therefore securing automatic qualification. 

Her jump of 6.69m in Manchester saw the 31-year-old finish behind Jazmine Sawyers, who jumped 6.75m, and both will be alongside Lorraine Ugen in Japan. Irozuru secured the qualification mark (6.82m) back in 2019 when she became British champion with 6.86m. 

“It was a really satisfying feeling. Obviously for me I wanted to win in Manchester as it was my home track but I ticked the box in getting to Tokyo and that was the main thing,” she tells AW. “Getting the qualification and in the top two on the podium mattered. The distance does matter as you want to feel like you’re flying before Tokyo in those first three rounds so you can qualify for the final.

“Strength in depth is always an amazing thing because it forced us to jump further and you can’t just rest on your laurels. If they’re only two people jumping the standard you know you’re going to be on the team and there’s a different level of impetus. It’s a challenge and we’ll have to step up to every single year. It’s disappointing Shara [Proctor] won’t be there as I consider her a good friend but we’ll see what happens next year.” 

For all three Brits the challenge in Tokyo will be tough. The world lead is currently 7.17m, set by Ese Brume in Chula Vista back in May, and the US team includes Tara Davies, Brittney Reese and Quanesha Banks, who have all jumped further than 6.96m this year. 

Irozuru calls the global field ‘amazing’ and says she is ‘excited’ by the challenge. 

“It’s exciting but also nerve-wracking as you’re lining up against ladies who can jump beyond 7.0m and who have jumped further than you. I aspire to it and see it as a positive challenge,” Irozuru says. “I don’t go into a competition thinking I’m going to lose and I do go with that expectation that a personal best can come. That’s the mentality you need to have if you want to compete for medals and places on podiums and if I didn’t have it I wouldn’t be competing.

“I’ll be aiming for a minimum of 6.70m which is funny to say as I jumped 6.69m in Manchester. I want to level up, iron out the issues in the previous competitions and understanding that I did have a bit of an injury setback in May but now I’m finding my flow again.” 

Injuries aren’t new for Irozuru. Her Olympic qualification is nine years in the making after she was left out of the team at the 2012 Olympics in London, despite making the standard, before she ruptured her achilles tendon and was forced to miss the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. 

“Those experiences are painful and they still are. People talk about it like you appreciate the journey more from those challenges but I’d have absolutely loved to have been on that London 2012 team and that was a massive heartbreak and disappointment. In 2016, when I ruptured my achilles tendon, I felt like I was in incredible form that year,” the long jumper adds. 

“I’m a visual person so I’m going back to a very vivid moment [in 2016]. I just felt something and I didn’t make a big deal about it and I just held my foot and said ‘it’s just gone, I can’t feel it anymore’ and then the doctors came over and asked me to try and stand up on it but I couldn’t do anything with it. When I saw it happened to Christian Taylor I felt that and knew what had happened as you know your own body so intimately and you’re so in tune with it. You know that something is not quite right and how bad it can be.”

After rupturing her achilles tendon in 2016 when competing at the UTEP Invitational in Texas, Irozuru made the immediate decision to retire from the sport as she didn’t want to put her family and friends through more heartbreak. It was such a sudden decision that she actually left her kit back in Phoenix, Arizona where she was living at that time.

By that point she had gone through three surgeries and described how her agent had told her that ‘your body hates your talent’, due to the frustration from all of her team of Irozuru consistently getting knocked back. She had opened up with a season’s best of 6.62m after all. 

“Every obstacle that you overcome gives you resilience so that bouncing maybe doesn’t become easier per say but you know that it’s possible and after 2016 I thought I wouldn’t come back from the sport. Emotionally, physically and spiritually, I needed that reset to flip that switch. A lot of people have talked about taking a rest in the pandemic and performing better and it was the same for me when I had that break,” Irozuru says. 

“I was not willing to go through four years of torture then and there is so much sacrifice when you’re not at the higher levels and I couldn’t endure another four years.” 

Then, in 2019, Irozuru made the decision to return to athletics with the aim of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics. She says her Christian faith and her belief that she has been given a ‘purpose’ is the reason for the comeback. 

“If I didn’t have my faith in God then I wouldn’t be competing today and making an Olympic team. I’m just thankful for my faith and people of faith around me who can lift me up. I cried for months in 2016 due to the pain that I was in and it was that feeling of grief and loss. I was in church every Sunday and I felt lifted up by the support of everyone. I can’t even put it into words,” Irozuru tells AW. 

“Who I am is down to the belief that God is my father and my creator and so what I do is an extension of that. Ultimately, I believe I have been given a gift and I want to use it to the best of my ability. Me coming back to the sport was me thinking I had to do everything in my power to fulfil my potential and not come away with regret and I’ve tossed it aside because of fear, set-backs and frustrations. I believe this is my purpose and calling and this is what I’m made to do in this moment and I’m not going to be jumping forever.” 

It’s been quite a journey for Irozuru. After she wasn’t selected for the 2012 Olympic team she became a legal researcher until 2014 before becoming a full-time athlete. In 2016 she received a long-term injury which required surgery and retired from the sport but that was only the start and not the end of her athletics story. 

Now she’s off to Tokyo and it’s no surprise to see that her latest blog post – set-up in 2014 when the long jumper became a full-time athlete – is on how she feels about making the team. 

One of the quotes in that blog is from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist – a book about perspective, following your dreams and living life – sums up Irozuru’s journey in a nutshell. 

It reads: “Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.”