Olympic legend launches scathing attack on "struggling" athletics chiefs ahead of Paris Games

Twenty nine years on from his triple jump world record Jonathan Edwards still pinches himself.

But the former Olympic and world champion thinks that his 18.29m jump from 1995 might soon be eclipsed because a new star is about to announce himself to a global audience.

Spain’s Jordan Diaz recorded the third-longest jump of all time at the recent European Championships in Rome with 18.18m, while Portugal’s Pedro Pichardo has beaten 18m already this season.

Yet it is Jamaica’s Jaydon Hibbert who has blown Edwards away heading towards Paris. And Edwards says he has recently accepted that one of track and field’s longest-standing records is likely to be bettered soon.

“It’s still an amazing thing. I’ll be walking with my wife and I’ll still say to her, ‘I’ve jumped farther than anyone.’ I’ll never tire of it,” he says. “But I’m at that stage now of accepting it will be broken. If you go back 10 years I’d be really nervous.

“When I was still working in the sport, doing the media stuff, I felt a much closer connection to it and it was almost as if everyone was looking for my reaction, a schadenfreude type thing. That was always a bit bizarre.

“But it’s been an incredible amount of time and it’s not diminished if it goes now. I’d like to hold on to it for as long as possible but I’m resigned to the fact it will be broken some time soon. That’s fine.”

Hibbert, 19, set an under-20 record of 17.87m last year and he was injured during last year’s world championship final having recorded the best jump in qualifying. And Edwards believes with some finesse the US-based starlet can become a great.

“He’s very bouncy,” the GB legend, speaking at a recent Puma event in Paris, adds. “He doesn’t look particularly fast but his ability is remarkable.

“When he develops and adds speed it will be interesting to see how his technique holds up. My thing was running very fast and maintaining that speed through the jumps. My jumping ability per se wasn’t outstanding but I could marry it with speed.”

Edwards will watch Paris as an avid fan and is most excited by the clash between Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m.

However he is concerned by how athletics has drifted from mainstream attention since the retirement of Usain Bolt and believes the sport’s governing body must do more to engage younger audiences.

He is not convinced by either recent proposals to tweak some events or an increasingly disjointed calendar - with the proposal to trial removing the board from jumping competitions a case in point.

“If World Athletics thinks that will solve their problems then they are sorely mistaken,” he says. “There are a lot of sports with a high failure level. Look at Patrick Mahomes’ statistics. To make the competition shorter doesn’t materially change it - have four jumps or three but this would change it fundamentally. If that’s the thinking to reinvigorate the sport, it’s highly questionable.

“Bolt carried the sport. When he came into the sport, it was one of the premier sports in the world. Now it’s lost that position and I think it’s struggling. That’s why the Olympics are really important but they need to get the in between years right. It’s muddled thinking about what the sport actually needs.”