Jazmin Sawyers

Jazmin Sawyers (born 21 May 1994) is a British track and field athlete and sports presenter who competes in the long jump, representing Great Britain and England. In 2023, she won her first major senior title at the 2023 European Indoor Championships.

Jazmin Sawyers
Sawyers at the 2023 European Indoor Championships in Istanbul
Personal information
Born (1994-05-21) 21 May 1994
Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, England
EducationUniversity of Bristol
Height1.62 m (5 ft 4 in)[1]
Weight60 kg (132 lb)
Sport
CountryGreat Britain
England
SportAthletics
Event(s)Long jump
Coached byAston Moore
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)6.90 m (Chula Vista 2021)
Indoors
7.00 m NR (Istanbul 2023)
Medal record
Women's athletics
Representing  Great Britain
European Championships
Silver medal – second place2016 AmsterdamLong jump
Bronze medal – third place2022 MunichLong jump
European Indoor Championships
Gold medal – first place2023 IstanbulLong jump
European U23 Championships
Silver medal – second place2015 TallinnLong jump
World Junior Championships
Bronze medal – third place2012 BarcelonaLong jump
European Junior Championships
Silver medal – second place2013 RietiLong jump
Representing  England
Commonwealth Games
Silver medal – second place2014 GlasgowLong jump
Commonwealth Youth Games
Gold medal – first place2011 Isle of ManLong jump
Gold medal – first place2011 Isle of Man4 x 100 m relay
Women's bobsleigh
Representing  Great Britain
Winter Youth Olympics
Silver medal – second place2012 InnsbruckBobsleigh

Sawyers won the silver medal representing England in the long jump at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. She claimed silver and bronze representing Great Britain at the 2016 and 2022 European Championships respectively. Sawyers competed at both the 2016 Rio and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, finishing eighth in the event on both occasions.[2]

As a junior, She won bronze in the long jump at the 2012 World Junior Championships and silver at the 2013 European Junior Championships.Sawyers earned silver at the 2015 European Under-23 Championships. She is a double gold medalist, in long jump and sprint relay, from the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games.

Sawyers is a five-time national champion. She is the British indoor record holder for the long jump with an outright best of 7.00 m.

She has also competed for Great Britain as a bobsledder and a heptathlete. Sawyer won a silver medal at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbuck in 2012 in bobsleigh.

Outside of sport, Sawyers is also a musician, and competed in the sixth series of The Voice UK.

Early life

Jazmin Sawyers was born in Stoke-on-Trent to a Jamaican father and an English mother, who later became the Chief Constable of Staffordshire.[3][4] She was initially a child gymnast, participating in the sport from the age of four. At ten years old she began to take part in athletics events at school and decided to start practising in various events.[5]

Sawyers studied for a degree in law at Bristol University,[6] graduating with a 2:1.[7]

Athletics career in detail

As part of City of Stoke Athletics Club, Sawyers focused mainly on high jump and long jump.[8] At the 2007 English Schools Championships she was the high jump runner-up with a personal best of 1.70 m (5 ft 6+3⁄4 in), finishing behind Katarina Johnson-Thompson.[9] The following year, Sawyers won the English Schools' titles in the long jump and the pentathlon – a feat she repeated in 2009.[8] In 2010, she won a scholarship to study at Millfield public school.

Youth and junior medals

Sawyer's first international appearances came in 2011. At the World Youth Championships, she placed ninth in the heptathlon. She cleared six metres in the long jump for the first time that year and surpassed that mark to win the gold in the event at the Commonwealth Youth Games.[8] She was also a 4 × 100 metres relay champion with England at that event.[10]

Sawyers' bobsleigh training at the start of 2012 meant she was ill-prepared for heptathlon in the summer. She opted to focus on the long jump instead, as this combined well with the explosive strength training she had undertaken for the winter sport.[5] This proved to be a successful switch as she set a personal best and world-leading junior mark of 6.64 m (21 ft 9+1⁄4 in) to place third at the British Championships.[11] Sawyers was the bronze medallist at the World Junior Championships – her distance of 6.67 m (21 ft 10+1⁄2 in) was beaten only by the wind-assisted jumps of British rival Katerina Johnson-Thompson and Germany's Lena Malkus.[12] Sawyers' performance was the second best wind-legal jump by a junior woman that year.[13]

She gained a place at the University of Sheffield and began training there as well with local coach Toni Minichiello.[5] She continued her focus on the long jump into the 2013 season. Sawyers was runner-up at the BUCS University Championships indoor and outdoors. She repeated that placing at her two major events that year, taking silver behind Shara Proctor at the UK Championships then another silver at the European Junior Championships behind Malaika Mihambo of Germany.[14] At the end of the track and field season, Sawyers won her first meet abroad at the Gugl Games in Linz, Austria.[8] She changed university to study law and criminology at Bristol University. She based her training near the University of Bath, however, working with coach and former long jumper Alan Lerwill.[15]

2014: Commonwealth silver
Sawyers lands after her jump at the 2016 European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam

At the start of 2014, Sawyers set an indoor best of 6.44 m (21 ft 1+1⁄2 in) to place second to Johnson-Thompson at the British Indoor Championships.[16] Outdoors, she had a string of victories (including a win at the Universities Championships) in the buildup to the European Team Championships, where she placed ninth overall. Sawyers was again second best to Johnson-Thompson at the outdoor National Championships but both gained selection for the long jump for England at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. However, Johnson-Thompson withdrew prior to the championships and the other leading English athlete Proctor could not compete in the final due to injury, making Sawyer's England's leading medal hope.[17] At the competition in Glasgow her final round jump of 6.54 m (21 ft 5+1⁄4 in) was a season's best and resulted in a silver medal – her first international senior medal and just two centimetres behind winner Ese Brume.[18]

2020–2022

Sawyers became a triple British champion when winning the long jump event at the 2020 outdoor British Championships with a jump of 6.69 metres. She had previously won the event back in 2016.[19]

At the 2020 Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, Sawyers finished 8th in the final with a distance of 6.80 metres.

At the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, she was in third position after all finalists had made their first jump, but was pushed just outside the top 8 when the eventual winner Malaika Mihambo made her first valid jump at the third attempt. She ended in ninth place with a distance of 6.62. At the Munich European Championships that year, Sawyers was in fourth position after five attempts. Ukraine's Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk was in third with 6.76 until Sawyers snatched bronze with 6.80 in the last round, reversing the outcome of 2018 when Bekh-Romanchuk displaced Sawyers from the podium with her last jump of the competition.[20]

2023–present: first major senior title

In March 2023, Sawyers captained Great Britain at the European Indoor Championships held in Istanbul.[21] She qualified for the final with her first jump,[22] and went on to jump 7.00 m to win gold, setting a national indoor record and outright best in the process.

In August 2023, Sawyers failed to qualify for the final of the World Athlethics Championships Long Jump.[23]

Bobsleigh career

In 2011, Sawyers was approached by the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association to train for the inaugural Youth Winter Olympics. Acting as brakewoman, she formed a two-man bob team with Mica McNeill. In January 2012 she represented Great Britain at the bobsleigh at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics and Sawyers and McNeill became the country's first ever medal-winning team at the competition (and the only medallists for Britain that year), taking the silver medals behind the Dutch team.[24] As a result, she was chosen as one of the carriers for the 2012 Olympic torch relay.[5]

Other activities

Sawyers is a singer/songwriter in her spare time and, in February 2017 appeared in ITV's The Voice UK. She was successful in securing Will.i.am as her coach during the 'blind auditions', though she told the programme her main priority remained with athletics.[6] She was eliminated from the programme on 26 February in a sing-off against fellow singer Hayley Eccles.[25] Sawyers was an Ambassador for Right To Play, the world's leading sport for development charity.[26] She visited Right To Play's education programme in Tanzania in 2018.

Statistics

Personal bests

International competitions
YearCompetitionVenuePositionEventResult
 Representing  Great Britain /  England
2011 World Youth Championships Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France 9th Heptathlon 5296 pts
Commonwealth Youth Games Douglas, Isle of Man 1st Long jump 6.27 m w
1st 4 × 100 m relay 46.19
2012 Winter Youth Olympics Innsbruck, Austria 2nd Two-girls bobsleigh 1:51.95
World Junior Championships Barcelona, Spain 3rd Long jump 6.67 m WJL
2013 European Junior Championships Rieti, Italy 2nd Long jump 6.63 m SB
2014 Commonwealth Games Glasgow, United Kingdom 2nd Long jump 6.54 m SB
2015 European U23 Championships Tallinn, Estonia 2nd Long jump 6.71 m PB
2016 World Indoor Championships Portland, OR, United States 13th Long jump 6.31 m
European Championships Amsterdam, Netherlands 2nd Long jump 6.86 m w
Olympic Games Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 8th Long jump 6.69 m
2017 European Indoor Championships Belgrade, Serbia 6th Long jump 6.67 m
World Championships London, United Kingdom 20th (q) Long jump 6.34 m
2018 Commonwealth Games Gold Coast, Australia 7th Long jump 6.35 m
European Championships Berlin, Germany 4th Long jump 6.67 m
2019 European Indoor Championships Glasgow, United Kingdom 17th (q) Long jump 6.28 m
World Championships Doha, Qatar 19th (q) Long jump 6.46 m
2021 European Indoor Championships Toruń, Poland 13th (q) Long jump 6.48 m
Olympic Games Tokyo, Japan 8th Long jump 6.80 m
2022 World Championships Eugene, OR, United States 9th Long jump 6.62 m
Commonwealth Games Birmingham, United Kingdom 4th Long jump 6.84 m SB
European Championships Munich, Germany 3rd Long jump 6.80 m
2023 European Indoor Championships Istanbul, Turkey 1st Long jump 7.00 m WL
World Championships Budapest, Hungary 22nd (q) Long jump 6.41

National titles

References
  1. "Athlete profile: Jazmin Sawyers". Gold Coast 2018. Commonwealth Games Corporation. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
  2. "Jazmin Sawyers". British Athletics.
  3. Woodhouse, John (7 June 2017). "Top cop Jane Sawyers hangs up her handcuffs after 33 years with Staffordshire Police". Stoke-on-Trent Live. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  4. "Jazmin Sawyers". Glasgow 2014. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  5. "Jazmin Sawyers". Sport Sheffield. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  6. Ben Bloom (7 February 2017). "Meet Jazmin Sawyers: From the Olympics to The Voice in six months"". The Telegraph. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  7. Jazmin Sawyers [@jazminsawyers] (28 June 2016). "I finally opened my degree results...so happy to say I'll be graduating from @BristolUni with a 2:1 in Law!! What a 24hrs!" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 November 2022 – via Twitter.
  8. "Jazmin Sawyers". Power of 10. British Athletics. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  9. "Sainsbury English Schools Championships 2007". Power of 10. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  10. "Commonwealth Youth Games 2011". Archived from the original on 31 August 2013. Retrieved 16 August 2014. World Junior Athletics History
  11. Minshull, Phil (7 July 2012). "Winter wonder Jazmin Sawyer still loves the Long Jump". IAAF. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  12. Valiente, Emeterio (13 July 2012). "Barcelona 2012 – Event Report – Women's Long Jump Final". IAAF. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  13. "Long Jump – women – junior – outdoor – 2012 Top List". IAAF. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  14. "Sainsbury's British Championships 2013". Power of 10. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  15. Reynolds, Tom (30 July 2014). "Just how much can Jazmin Sawyers achieve?". BBC Sport. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  16. "British Athletics Championships Indoor 2014". Power of 10. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  17. "Katarina Johnson-Thompson out of Glasgow 2014 with foot injury". BBC Sport. 21 July 2014. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  18. "Glasgow 2014: Jazmin Sawyers jumps to silver in long jump". BBC Sport. 31 July 2014. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  19. "Results list". British Athletics.
  20. "European Athletics". www.european-athletics.com.
  21. British Athletics [@BritAthletics] (1 March 2023). "Captain confirmed 💪 @JazminSawyers has been named as the team captain for GB and NI at the 2023 European Indoor Championships 👏 ... ⤵️ #WhereItStarts @euroindoor2023" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  22. British Athletics [@BritAthletics] (4 March 2023). "One jump is all it takes 👟 An opening attempt of 6.71m sees @JazminSawyers into the women's long jump final 👏 #Istanbul2023 #WhereItStarts" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  23. "Long Jump Women - Qualification" (pdf). IAAF.org. 19 August 2023.
  24. Hope, Nick (22 January 2012). "Winter Youth Olympics: GB bobsleigh duo win silver". BBC Sport. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  25. Tom Burnett (26 February 2017). "Jazmin Sawyers eliminated from The Voice on ITV". The Sentinel. Local World. Archived from the original on 27 February 2017. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
  26. "Right To Play ambassadors". Right To Play. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
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