Ending the season that began in May and ran until October with him winning a record third Asian Games title in Hangzhou, Mutaz Barshim is finally back home.
Qatar’s high jump legend has already set sights on the new season and an attempt on a second gold at the next year’s Paris Olympics.
The three-time world champion high jump champion was at the Lusail International Circuit on Sunday to witness the Formula 1 Qatar Airways Qatar Grand Prix.
Barshim, however, took out time while being at the paddock area ahead of the Grand Prix to speak about his recent wins and the season ahead.
“Hangzhou (Asian Games) was amazing. I was really, really happy with the result, 2.35 the winning Games record. Can’t complain. Good end of the season,” Barshim said.
Barshim claimed the Asian Games gold medal with a jump of 2.35m, equalling his Games record he had set in Incheon, South Korea in 2014.
South Korea’s Woo Sang-hyeok cleared 2.33m for silver, while Japan’s Tomohiro Shinno got the bronze with a season’s best leap of 2.29m.
Barshim was arguably the biggest track and field name at the Games. His personal best of 2.43m from 2014 is the second-highest jump of all time, behind Cuban great Javier Sotomayor’s world record mark of 2.45 set in 1993.
His long list of medals include silver at both the London 2012 and the Rio 2016 Olympics, then gold in Tokyo in 2021 which he famously shared with his rival Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi.
He became the first high jumper in history to win consecutive world championship golds in 2017 and 2019, then added a third in the Covid-19 delayed Eugene championships in 2022.
He also won world silver in 2013 and world bronze earlier this year in Budapest
“I am feeling well. Feeling good coming back now home for recovery. You know, it’s off-season. I want to recharge my mind and my body and hopefully be ready for the next season. It’s a big season with the Olympics coming up soon. Yeah, we need to be ready,” Barshim said.
When asked about new pursuits and the all-time world record of 2.45m jump, Barshim quipped, “Of course. For me, to be honest, everything is on the line and I want to do as much as possible during my career. It’s the Olympic year in 2024. Of course, you don’t wanna do something stupid. The preparation got to be in place for the podium. That’s definitely the goal. It’s going to be a season where I would not like to be at so much risk because you want to make sure that you are ready and be peaking at the right time. Apart from that everything, yeah has to be well in terms of preparation.”
Barshim also spoke about the challenge of raising the level by even one centimetre which he recently termed as “going to hell and back”.
He explained: “The better you are as an athlete, the more difficult it becomes after a certain level because you know you are trying to push the barrier as much as possible and there is so much detail that’s going on. There are so many technicalities that go into it. It’s almost like an engineering work going between me and the coach trying to figure out every little detail. Any minimal error there that we can actually adjust to keep yourself higher. So I don’t know how I can explain but it takes a lot to go high.
“When you are watching my jump, you would say, ‘Oh what a jump’. It may look good to rest but when I look at my jump, I see problems. Like this shouldn’t be here and actually here. So there’s more analysis going on but to be honest every small thing counts,” he said.