Name	Yargelis Savigne
Height	5’4
Naionality	Cuban
Date of Birth	November 13, 1984
Place of Birth	Guantanamo
Famous for

Olympic rookie
Yargelis Savigne will make her Olympic debut for Cuba this summer in Beijing, where she figures to contend for the gold medal in the women's triple jump. A distant relative of successful Cuban athletes, Savigne is one of a handful of jumpers ever to clear 50 feet in the event and is coming off a breakout year.

Indoor success
After watching Greece's Piyi Devetzi set a new national record with her opening round jump at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Savigne rose to the occasion. Each round, she kept getting stronger until she popped a Cuban national record jump of 15.05m/49-4 ½ to win gold. Savigne's mark ranks as the fourth longest in indoor history.

Historic hop
Savigne enters the Olympic year as the gold medal favorite in the women's triple jump having put together a dominant 2007 season. She posted 12 victories on the year, including a win at the World Championships in Osaka, where she jumped 15.28m/50-1 ¾, becoming just the sixth jumper ever to clear 50 feet in the event.
Yargelis Savigne of Cuba competes in the triple jump at the World Championships in Osaka.
Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images
Yargelis Savigne of Cuba competes in the triple jump at the World Championships in Osaka.

Going for two
At the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, Savigne decided to compete in both horizontal-jumping events. She improved her personal best in the triple jump four times culminating with her mark of 14.82m/48-7 ½, good for a surprise silver medal and a new Cuban national record. Three days later, she almost medalled again, finishing fourth in the long jump at 6.99m/22-11 ¼.

Soaring senior
Savigne made her senior debut at the 2003 Pan American Games, winning bronze in the long jump at 6.74m/22-1 ½. She had a breakthrough in 2005 when she improved her long jump best to 6.77m/22-2 ½ and qualified for the Cuban national team for the first time for the European tour. Since there was a shortage of long jump competitions on the European circuit, Savigne's coach Milan Matos urged her to try the triple jump. She jumped 14.12m/46-4 using just a nine-step run-up to finish second in Bilbao. Savigne moved back to 11 steps and improved her best to 14.63m/48-0 in a runner-up finish in Padova.

Jumping junior
In her international debut, Savigne won the long jump at the 2002 Caribbean and Central American Championships in Barbados with a jump of 6.25m/20-6 ¼, but an injury to her right knee ruined her medal chances at the World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica later that year. She qualified for the final, but she was in such a pain that could not contest for the medals. Fully recovered from that injury in 2003, she broke the national junior record with a leap of 6.63m/21-9.

Young start
There is no sporting background in Savigne's immediate family, but distant relatives have excelled in baseball and boxing. Savigne took up track and field in school at age 11 and was promoted to the Rafael Freyre EIDE Sports School on the outskirts of Guantánamo. She was a sprinter initially, but she preferred the jumps. In 1997, she began to train under Euardo Grant, who taught her triple and long jumping. Good results in the National School Games enabled her to train in the ESPA Sports School in her province, with coach Arnaldo Charadan. A long jump win at the 2001 National Junior Championships earned her a spot on the junior national team

Champion company
Savigne trained in a group led by the recently-retired Sydney Olympic gold medalist Ivan Pedroso, winner of nine indoor and outdoor world titles. Her manager is Javier Sotomayor, the 1992 Olympic high jump gold medalist.

Family ties
The oldest of four children (two boys and two girls), Savigne was born in the town of Niceto Perez, some 10km from the city of Guantanamo, in the easternmost province of Cuba. Her father Diosdado is a driver and her mother Marbelis is a manicurist. Her family nickname is "Yayi." Outside of track, she likes watching films and soap operas, as well as listening to reggae, hip hop and classic music.