As expected, prosthetic jumper Markus Rehm won his sixth title in a row at the Para Athletics World Championships in Paris.
The 34-year-old triumphed in the T64 starting class with 8.49 meters – and was once again unattainable for the competition: he was 1.10 meters ahead of second-placed Derek Loccident from the USA. At the end of June, Rehm had improved his para world record to 8.72 meters. No long jumper without a disability has flown further for 14 years.
Rehm recently proclaimed Mike Powell’s 32-year-old record of 8.95 as a new dream goal, and actually wanted to get closer in Paris. That didn’t work on Friday, but Rehm surpassed his own World Cup record from 2015 by nine centimeters.
The man from Leverkusen has been unbeaten in major para sport events since 2011. Since then he has not only won six World Championship titles in long jump, but also five European Championship triumphs and three gold medals at the Paralympics.
After its triumph in the Charlety Stadium, the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) now has eight medals (3x gold, 2x silver, 3x bronze). In the morning, Mathias Schulze finished fifth in the shot put of the F46 starting class, just like at the Paralympics in Tokyo, missing a medal by half a meter.
The Para Athletics World Championships, which will last until Monday, are a kind of dress rehearsal for the Paralympics next year (August 28 to September 8, 2024), which will also take place in the French capital. At the previous World Championships in Dubai in 2019, the German team had won eleven precious metals in ninth place (7x gold, 2x silver, 2x bronze).