SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Jasmine Moore always loved jumping. For a while when she was a kid, she thought all those leaps, with a few twirls mixed in, might make her part of America’s Team — as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
How’s this for a backup plan: She’s on America’s team in Paris.
The 23-year-old, seven-time NCAA champion parlayed all that leaping ability into not one but two chances for an Olympic gold medal. Moore is the first U.S. woman to make the Games in both the triple jump and the long jump.
Moore, who grew up in the Dallas-Forth Worth area in Texas and got used to flying high as a kid in gymnastics and competitive cheerleading, eventually gave all that up to pursue a life in track and field. She leaned into the triple jump first, then took up long jumping because it wasn’t all that different.
“For me, the goal was always ‘free college,’ getting a scholarship,” she said.
She did just that — first at Georgia, then at Florida — and now, she is in Paris, with a jam-packed schedule and maybe a little extra room in her suitcase for souvenirs and anything else she might take away from these Olympics of a gold, silver or bronze variety.
“I think making the long jump was kind of a personal goal, and I think triple jump was kind of expected,” Moore said. “But it’s like proving to myself that I can do anything I put my mind to. If I have a goal, I can set it. If you want to do something, it is attainable.”
Moore’s personal bests — 15.12 meters in triple jump, 7.03 meters in long jump — are both centimeters over the “magic numbers” of 15 and 7 for the two events. It makes her a contender in either if she has a good day.
Another goal is to be competing in the long jump final on Aug. 8, the same evening as the gold-medal race in the men’s 200 meters. That’s a race her boyfriend, reigning African and three-time NCAA champion Joseph Fahnbulleh — a Minnesota native who competes for Liberia — hopes to be part of.
They met three years ago at the Tokyo Games and have been together since. Both ran for Florida, and now they live and train in Gainesville.
“What inspires me about her?” Fahnbulleh said. “Everything. It’s how meticulous she is about how she trains. What she eats. Her attention to detail about everything she does.”
Moore makes it sound like it’s no big deal to move from one event back to the other and, in fact, the back and forth isn’t all that uncommon in the high school and college ranks. One person she looks up to, Keturah Orji, did both through college before focusing this year on triple jump, where she will compete this week in her third Olympics.
Moore, meanwhile, is spending all her time right now training for the more technical triple jump, where the timing of the hop, skip and takeoff “phases” is the key to success. Qualifications start Saturday.
“I feel like triple jump is my baby,” she said. “I feel like I have a lot of potential in that event. When it’s going well, I enjoy it a little more. But long jump is a lot of fun. You just get to fly in the air. You don’t have to worry about ‘this phase, that phase.’”
No matter where she finishes, the Olympics will be a celebration for Moore and her entire family. Her mom and dad, both track athletes during their college days, will be in Paris. So will older sister Jayla, along with “grandparents, aunts, cousins, my sister’s boyfriend and his family.”
They’ll have plenty to watch.
If there’s action in the jumping pit over the next week-plus at the Stade de France, there’s a good chance Moore will be involved.
“It was a goal to make both, but not a goal to be the first one,” said Moore, who concedes she had no idea she was making history. “It feels really good. It’s kind of hard to do the double, but I’ve done it at every level, so I just continue to keep wanting to do both of them whenever it’s possible.”
The key lesson from all this jumping?
“Doing this has proved to myself, ‘Oh, I can do this, so I don’t have to choose,’” she said. “That’s the most exciting part of it.”