Tara Davis-Woodhall arrived at the Stockholm Diamond League with the promise of flight. Eyes set on rewriting the record books in the women’s long jump! The stage was ready. The spotlight was hers. But when the sand settled and the scoreboard blinked, the numbers told a different story. The record stood untouched. And for Davis-Woodhall, it was a moment of reckoning, and she is not hiding what it felt like…

In a true sportsman spirit, Davis-Woodhall faced her shortcomings head-on. June 15, in her post-race interview after the women’s long jump, Davis-Woodhall reflected with honesty and clarity: “I bring a lot of speed at the start of my approach and accelerate to the end,” she admitted. “But you can see I stutter my steps at the end of the approach.” Her tone wasn’t frustrated. It was honest. The kind of honesty only athletes at the highest level can offer. She knew what went wrong. Not in vague terms. She broke it down like someone who had watched the jump a hundred times in her head before even leaving the runway.

It wasn’t about effort; that was there. It wasn’t about desire. She had that in buckets. The issue, she explained, was precision. “I ended up needing to scoot back a metre to be open with my steps and bring my speed at the takeoff,” Davis-Woodhall said. Every inch, every stride, every second matters in the long jump. And while her natural speed got her far, her timing, those final few steps, cost her more. But there was no sense of defeat in her words. Just the itch to get it right.

In fact, despite not being able to break the meet record, she saw signs of growth. “I finally got to my end-of-season mark, which is a metre back from where I started today,” she pointed out. Still, her 7.05m jump—while a meet record and a season’s best—fell just short of the world lead of 7.14m set earlier this year by Olympic champion Malaika Mihambo. It’s a gap Davis-Woodhall is clearly aiming to close as the season heats up.

“I’m super excited to feel my approach and feel what it is like to go flying again,” said the Olympic gold medalist. Those are not the words of someone discouraged. That’s a jumper gearing up for her next takeoff.

And that next leap? It’ll come to Eugene. “Now, it’s back to the drawing board and then back to the US for Prefontaine Classic,” she said, her voice steady, her eyes already locked on the next runway. “I love Hayward Field, love the track meet and the fans.” Well, Stockholm may not have brought a record, but it brought something else. Clarity. And if Tara Davis-Woodhall’s reflections are any indication, she’s not done flying just yet. And all of these things coming from an athlete are pretty rare. Tara Davis-Woodhall can do so because she is aiming to change the sport for good. 

Falling short but still leading…

Yes, Davis-Woodhall has fallen short of breaking the world record. But that, in no way, points to the overall legacy she is cementing. In 2024, she didn’t just win Olympic gold in Paris—she helped crack open a new era for track and field. Her 7.10-meter leap made her only the fourth American woman to win Olympic long jump gold, but it’s what she’s done since that’s turning heads. From joyful cartwheels between competitions to showing up with her Paralympian husband, Hunter Woodhall, Tara is leading a movement rooted in authenticity and love for the sport.

She’s not just competing anymore—she’s building. “I just want this sport to be elevated back to where it used to be,” she says, and she’s putting action behind the mission. This fall, she’ll be the first long jumper featured in Athlos, the high-energy, all-women track and field league launched by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. After drawing millions of global viewers in 2024 without a single field event, the addition of Tara signals a deliberate shift: more visibility, more storytelling, and a broader view of track and field’s untapped potential.

But make no mistake, her power starts with belief. “Every time after that, when I saw ‘8:08’…I would say, ‘That’s the day I’m going to win the Olympics.’” The clock struck 20:08 military time as Tara soared to victory, a moment she now calls a manifestation come true. For Tara Davis-Woodhall, gold was never the finish line. It was just the beginning.