Nafissatou Thiam

Thiam came fourth in the heptathlon at the 2011 World Youth Athletics Championships in Lille, France, with a score of 5366 points. She then placed 14th in the heptathlon at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics as a first-year junior with a total of 5384 points. With a total of 4558 points at a competition in Ghent on February 3, 2013, Thiam set the junior indoor world record in the pentathlon, surpassing her personal best in four of the five events. With 4535 points, Carolina Klüft, afterwards an Olympic winner and three-time world champion, had held the record since 2002. Thiam accomplished this feat, becoming the first female athlete from Belgium to achieve a world record.

However, the record was not certified in March 2013 due to a lack of anti-doping supervision on the day it was established. The testing went occurred the next day, which was after the IAAF, World Athletics (athletics’ international governing body) had set a deadline. At the 2013 European Junior Athletics Championships, Thiam claimed the gold medal in the heptathlon with a new Belgian record of 6298 points on July 18, 2013.

Thiam won the pentathlon with a total of 4870 points on March 3, 2017 at the 2017 European Indoor Championships in Belgrade. On August 6, 2017, Thiam clinched the heptathlon world title and became the first Belgian to win a gold medal at the World Athletics Championships. He entered the World Championships in London as the strongest contender for the title. She became just the third woman, after Carolina Klüft and Jessica Ennis-Hill, to win the heptathlon at the Olympic Games, the World Championships, and the European Championships on August 10, 2018, when she won home the gold medal.

On October 2, 2019, Thiam entered the World Championships as the favorite to win gold and the current leader in the world, although Katarina Johnson-Thompson of Great Britain was anticipated to present a stiffer challenge. In the event, Johnson-Thompson won easily after recording a tremendous personal best of 6981 points, a national record, and the sixth highest competition score in history, while Thiam succumbed to an elbow ailment that prevented her from throwing the javelin. However, she still managed to clinch the silver medal. With a final score of 4904 points on March 5, 2021, Thiam won the pentathlon at the 2021 European Indoor Championships in Torun. She earned 6791 points overall and her second gold medal in the Olympic Games on August 5, 2021. She scored 6947 points overall and with this, she won her second gold medal at the 2022 World Athletics Championships on July 18, 2022.

Her greatest rival at present is Katarina Johnson-Thompson of Great Britain. She has been a world champion in both heptathlon and indoor pentathlon. In addition, she is a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medalist in heptathlon.

Nafissatou Thiam was born on August 19, 1994 in Brussels, Belgium to a Belgian mother and a Senegalese father. When she was seven years old, she began engaging in athletics. By that time she won her first national age group titles in 2009 and had already chosen to focus on the heptathlon. Carolina Klüft, a Swedish heptathlete, was her favorite athlete at the moment. Thiam is currently a member of RFCL Athlétisme, an athletics club run by the Royal Football Club de Liège’s Technical and Sports Department. Thiam attended the University of Liège to study geography and received her bachelor’s degree from the university on September 2019. She now serves as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF Belgium.