 Sawyers at the2023 European Indoor Championships inIstanbul | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1994-05-21)21 May 1994 (age 31) Stoke-on-Trent, England |
| Education | University of Bristol |
| Height | 1.62 m (5 ft 4 in)[1] |
| Weight | 60 kg (132 lb) |
| Sport | |
| Country | Great Britain England |
| Sport | Athletics |
Event | Long jump |
| Coached by | Aston Moore |
| Achievements and titles | |
| Personalbests | 6.90 m (Chula Vista 2021) Indoors 7.00 mNR (Istanbul 2023) |
Medal record | |
Jazmin Sawyers (born 21 May 1994) is a Britishtrack and field athlete and sports presenter who competes in thelong jump, representing Great Britain andEngland. In 2023, she won her first major senior title at the2023 European Indoor Championships.
Sawyers won the silver medal representing England in the long jump at the2014 Commonwealth Games. She claimed silver and bronze representing Great Britain at the2016 and2022 European Championships respectively. Sawyers competed at both the2016 Rio and the2020 Tokyo Olympics, finishing eighth in the event on both occasions.[2]
As a junior, She won bronze in the long jump at the2012 World Junior Championships and silver at the2013 European Junior Championships.Sawyers earned silver at the2015 European Under-23 Championships. She is a double gold medalist, in long jump and sprint relay, from the2011 Commonwealth Youth Games.
Sawyers is a five-time national champion. She is theBritish indoor record holder for the long jump with an outright best of 7.00 m.
She has also competed for Great Britain as abobsledder and aheptathlete. Sawyer won a silver medal at theWinter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbuck in 2012 in bobsleigh.
Outside of sport, Sawyers is also a musician, and competed in thesixth series ofThe Voice UK.
Jazmin Sawyers was born inStoke-on-Trent to aJamaican 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 atBristol University,[6] graduating with a 2:1.[7]
As part of City of Stoke Athletics Club, Sawyers focused mainly onhigh jump andlong jump.[8] At the 2007English Schools Championships she was the high jump runner-up with a personal best of 1.70 m (5 ft6+3⁄4 in), finishing behindKatarina Johnson-Thompson.[9] The following year, Sawyers won the English Schools' titles in the long jump and thepentathlon – a feat she repeated in 2009.[8] In 2010, she won a scholarship to study atMillfieldpublic school.
Sawyer's first international appearances came in 2011. At theWorld 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 theCommonwealth Youth Games.[8] She was also a4 × 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 explosivestrength 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 ft9+1⁄4 in) to place third at theBritish Championships.[11] Sawyers was the bronze medallist at theWorld Junior Championships – her distance of 6.67 m (21 ft10+1⁄2 in) was beaten only by the wind-assisted jumps of British rival Katerina Johnson-Thompson and Germany'sLena Malkus.[12] Sawyers' performance was the second best wind-legal jump by a junior woman that year.[13]
She gained a place at theUniversity of Sheffield and began training there as well with local coachToni Minichiello.[5] She continued her focus on the long jump into the 2013 season. Sawyers was runner-up at theBUCS University Championships indoor and outdoors. She repeated that placing at her two major events that year, taking silver behindShara Proctor at theUK Championships then another silver at theEuropean Junior Championships behindMalaika Mihambo of Germany.[14] At the end of the track and field season, Sawyers won her first meet abroad at theGugl Games inLinz, Austria.[8] She changed university to study law andcriminology atBristol University. She based her training near theUniversity of Bath, however, working with coach and former long jumperAlan Lerwill.[15]
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At the start of 2014, Sawyers set an indoor best of 6.44 m (21 ft1+1⁄2 in) to place second to Johnson-Thompson at theBritish Indoor Championships.[16] Outdoors, she had a string of victories (including a win at the Universities Championships) in the buildup to theEuropean Team Championships, where she placed ninth overall. Sawyers was again second best to Johnson-Thompson at theoutdoor National Championships but both gained selection for the long jump forEngland at the2014 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 inGlasgow her final round jump of 6.54 m (21 ft5+1⁄4 in) was a season's best and resulted in a silver medal – her first international senior medal and just two centimetres behind winnerEse Brume.[18]
Sawyers became a tripleBritish champion when winning the long jump event at the2020 outdoor British Championships with a jump of 6.69 metres. She had previously won the event back in 2016.[19]
At the2020 Summer Olympics, held inTokyo in 2021, Sawyers finished 8th in the final with a distance of 6.80 metres.
At the2022 World Championships inEugene, 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 theMunich European Championships that year, Sawyers was in fourth position after five attempts. Ukraine'sMaryna 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]
In March 2023, Sawyers captained Great Britain at theEuropean Indoor Championships held inIstanbul.[21] She qualified for thefinal 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 theWorld Athletics Championships Long Jump.[23]
On 25 April 2024, Sawyers announced she had undergone surgery after rupturing the Achilles on her take-off leg and would subsequently miss theParis 2024 Olympics.[24] She was one of the team ofBBC commentators at the Olympic games for theAthletics.
In 2025, Sawyers won her fifth British outdoor title in the long jump at the2025 UK Athletics Championships.
In 2011, Sawyers was approached by theBritish Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association to train for the inauguralYouth Winter Olympics. Acting asbrakewoman, she formed atwo-man bob team withMica McNeill. In January 2012 she represented Great Britain at thebobsleigh at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics and Sawyers and McNeill became the country's first ever medal-winning team at the competition (and the onlymedallists for Britain that year), taking the silver medals behind the Dutch team.[25] As a result, she was chosen as one of the carriers for the2012 Olympic torch relay.[5]
Sawyers is a singer/songwriter in her spare time and, in February 2017 appeared inITV'sThe Voice UK. She was successful in securingWill.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.[26]Sawyers was an Ambassador forRight To Play, the world's leading sport for development charity.[27] She visited Right To Play's education programme in Tanzania in 2018.
