Luvo to have leap of faith in the Alps

NEWLY crowned world champion Luvo Manyonga will have a crack at the 8.95m long-jump world record at a specially arranged jumps meet at high altitude in the French Alps next week.

The competition on Wednesday will be staged at 3 032m above sea level at the bottom of the Grande Motte glacier at Tignes, which offers year-round skiing, using a temporary sand pit.

“If there’s a chance of Luvo breaking the record, it will be at this meet because of the altitude,” coach Neil Cornelius said at a press briefing in London featuring his charge Manyonga and long-jump bronze medallist Ruswahl Samaai.

“It’s going to happen eventua added the coach. “We will get a big jump.”

The two world marks before Mike Powell’s record from 1991 were set at altitude, both in Mexico City, in 1967 and 1968.

American triple-jump star Christian Taylor will also be in action in Tignes.

Manyonga and Samaai, both products of Paarl, have already returned to full training as they prepare to see out the rest of their season, but they’re also dreaming of taking their parents on holidays.

Manyonga, 26, wants to take his retrenched forklift operator father and domestic worker mother to Mauritius, while Samaai, 25, is thinking of taking his factory worker mom on a sea cruise in local waters.

“I wanted [her] to stop working, I want to work for her,” said Manyonga, owner of the 8.65 national mark. “But my mom doesn’t want to stop working.”

He’s also planning on slaughtering a calf on his return to the Western Cape and visiting the Eastern Cape to give thanks to his ancestors.

Samaai is looking forward to playing golf in the off-season, a sport he played in primary school and only returned to after the Rio Olympics last year.

Both admitted to being surprised by the people who had congratulated them.

Manyonga, the Olympic silver medallist who missed gold by 1cm last year, said he had asked Portuguese triple jumper Patricia Mamona if he could take a picture with her.

“Then she said ‘no, I want to take a picture with the champ’, and I was like ‘what? She wants to take a picture with me’.”