High jump world records( men's high jump records

The men’s high jump world record is 2.45 m (8 ft ¼ in), set by Javier Sotomayor of Cuba. He cleared it on 27 July 1993 in Salamanca, Spain. A World Athletics results sheet from March 2026 still lists it as the standing record, so it appears to be unbroken as of this year. topendsports Sotomayor He was born in Cuba in 1967 and was first scouted for basketball before moving to the high jump. guinnessworldrecords He set a world junior record in 1984, and won two outdoor world championship titles in the 1990s, plus Olympic silver in 2000. guinnessworldrecords He also holds the indoor world record of 2.43 m. topendsports The 2.45 m jump was his last record, and he has held the world record for about 35 years in total. flashscore How the record got there World Athletics has ratified 40 men’s high jump world records. guinnessworldrecords In the early 1960s, Valeriy Brumel of the Soviet Union broke the record six times in three years, reaching 2.28 m, before a motorcycle crash hurt his career. guinnessworldrecords By the late 1980s the record was 2.42 m. Patrik Sjöberg of Sweden set that height in 1987, and Sotomayor went past it a few years later. guinnessworldrecords Dick Fosbury’s “Fosbury Flop” at the 1968 Olympics changed the technique. Fosbury himself never broke the world record. guinnessworldrecords Closest challengers Mutaz Essa Barshim (Qatar) is the closest in modern times. His 2.43 m in Brussels in September 2014 is second on the all-time outdoor list. iaaf Sjöberg (2.42 m, 1987) and Bohdan Bondarenko of Ukraine (2.42 m, 2014) are next on that list. Bondarenko also holds the World Championships record of 2.41 m from 2013. Wikipedia How far out of reach it is Sotomayor has said that today 2.33 or 2.34 m is enough for a gold or bronze medal at world or Olympic level. flashscore Sotomayor ran his best approaches at around 8 m/s (about 30 km/h). sporza A Belgian TV programme explored why no one has beaten the record since 1993. sporza For comparison, the women’s record fell in 2024, when Yaroslava Mahuchikh jumped 2.10 m, after 37 years. The men’s mark has now lasted over 33 years. guinnessworldrecords. Javier Sotomayor’s career Early years. Sotomayor was born in Limonar, Cuba, in 1967. At fourteen he was already clearing two metres regularly, which earned him a scholarship at a sports school in Havana, where he met his coach José Godoy. At the 1986 World Junior Championships in Athens, a jump of 2.36 m won gold and a world junior record. biografiasyvidas biografiasyvidas Peak years. He missed the 1988 Seoul Olympics because of Cuba’s boycott, but cleared 2.43 m at the 1989 World Indoor Championships in Budapest. usp He was world outdoor champion in 1993 and 1997, and world indoor champion four times (1989, 1993, 1995, 1999). athleticsweekly He won Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992. He was the first non-European to win Olympic high jump gold since Dick Fosbury in 1968. Wikipedia thepeninsulaqatar His 2.45 m came in Salamanca in 1993, on his second attempt. usp He cleared 2.40 m or higher 24 times in his career. ESPN Doping. This is the controversial part of his story. He was stripped of his 1999 Pan American Games gold in Winnipeg after testing positive for cocaine. cubanet The IAAF later cut his two-year ban to one year, citing exceptional circumstances and his exemplary 15-year career. That cleared him for Sydney. cubanet Sotomayor said he never took the drug, and Cuban officials backed him. cubanet He retired in 2001 after a nandrolone positive. Retiring avoided the lifetime ban that normally follows a second offence. Wikipedia He won silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics but never fully regained his earlier level. biografiasyvidas Since retiring. He is now secretary of the Cuban athletics federation. He runs a restaurant in Cuba with a bar mounted at 2.45 m. thepeninsulaqatar athleticsweekly How high jump technique evolved Scissors and straight-on approaches. Early jumpers used an elaborate straight-on approach or the scissors technique. With the scissors, the bar stays well below the jumper’s centre of mass, so it is far from optimal. greatestsportingnation Wikipedia Eastern cut-off. This was the most natural and successful variation of the scissors. Wikipedia Western roll. George Horine developed it. The take-off leg is the inside leg, the one nearer the bar. goodreads Straddle. Jumpers took off as in the Western roll but rotated belly-down around the bar. This was the most efficient clearance to that point. It developed from the Western roll. Valeriy Brumel dominated the 1960s with it. High jump +2 Fosbury flop. Fosbury began experimenting at 16 because he struggled with the straddle. A local paper coined the name, saying he looked like a fish flopping in a boat. He won the 1968 Olympic title, and by 1972 28 of the 40 competitors were flopping. He also worked with Adi Dassler on special shoes. How The Fosbury Flop Revolutionized the High Jump +2 Was the flop actually better? Maybe not fundamentally. The last straddle world record, 2.35 m in 1978, would still be a top performance today. The flop’s dominance seems to come from being easier to learn, so beginners improve faster. One biomechanical analysis says flop jumpers compensate for the angular momentum they need by using a faster run-up. greatestsportingnation uni-konstanz Barshim’s attempts at the record Rise. He cleared 2.43 m in Brussels in 2014, the second-highest jump ever, and is the Asian record holder. That is two centimetres short of Sotomayor. redbull Indoor attempt. In 2015 he set an Asian indoor record of 2.41 m in Athlone, then took three tries at a would-be world indoor record of 2.44 m. He missed. worldathletics The 2018 attempt. At the Gyulai memorial in Hungary he won at 2.40 m, then asked for the bar at 2.46 m. His first attempt was the closest. He called it his best attempt ever on a world record height. On the third try he planted his take-off foot and it just snapped. He tore ligaments in his ankle. gulf-times olympics Comeback. He called the injury career-threatening, but he came back. He won world titles in 2017, 2019 and 2022. At Paris 2024 he took bronze, his fourth Olympic medal. At the 2022 Worlds he took a single attempt at 2.42 m after the gold was secured. Mutaz Essa Barshim on his quest for high jump greatness +3 His stance. He said in 2023 that he has not given up on the record and “always aims for the maximum”. gulf-times My searches didn’t turn up any record attempts by Barshim in 2025 or 2026. A March 2026 World Athletics sheet I found earlier still lists Sotomayor as the record holder, and the 2026 world-leading jump on it was 2.33 m. He is 36 now, so the window is narrowing.