Jesse Williams (high jumper)
Jesse Williams (high jumper)
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Jesse Williams (high jumper)

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Jesse Williams (high jumper)

Jesse Daniel Williams (born December 27, 1983) is an American high jumper and the 2011 World Champion. He was ranked the #2 jumper in the world, outdoors, in 2010 and #1 in the world in 2011. He has jumped 53 centimeters above his height, a differential which places him among the top 20 jumpers of all time.

Williams attended high school at Broughton High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended North Carolina State University for one year (2003) before transferring and finishing his student-athlete career at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he won the NCAA track and field championships indoors 2005 and 2006 and outdoors in 2005 and 2006 becoming one of the few people to ever do so in the history of NCAA track and field. He is the school and Pac-10 record holder with a leap of 2.32 meters (7' 7 1/4").

He won three North Carolina high school 4A state titles while attending Broughton High School. He held the North Carolina high school state meet record in the high jump with a jump of 2.18m (7' 2") set in 2002, until Tanner Anderson (East Burke High School/Duke University) jumped 2.20m (7' 2.5") in 2010.

Jesse Williams was born December 27, 1983. As of 2010, he is 81 kg and his height is 1.84m (6 feet 1/2 inch, and 179 pounds). He jumps off his right foot. His personal best, indoors, is 2.36m (7' 8 3/4"), achieved at Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, on February 11, 2009. His outdoor best is 2.37m (7' 9 1/4") which he cleared to win the 2011 US Track & Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on June 26, 2011: that mark places Williams "equal third" on the all-time US list outdoors.

Williams finished fourth at the 2002 World Junior Championships, eighth at the 2006 World Athletics Final and 2007 World Athletics Final and third at the 2008 World Athletics Final sixth at the 2008 World Indoor Championships. His personal best jump is 2.36 metres, achieved in February 2009 in Banská Bystrica. He was the 2008 Olympic Trials champion in the high jump and competed for the United States in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He did not progress beyond the qualifying rounds.

During the 2009 indoor season he validated his off-season training at the elite Europa SC High Jump invitational, held at Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, on February 9, 2009. Williams set a personal best of 2.36m, but finished 2nd (on misses) to Swedish jumper Linus Thornblad (also 2.36). This was a significant improvement on William's previous indoor best, 2.32, set at the Banska Bystrica meet in 2008.

Unhappy with his failure to qualify for the Olympic final, Williams set his sights on the 2009 US Championships, saying "this year is a redemption year. I really feel like I can win a medal". In that meet Jesse jumped 2.28 meters on his third attempt to earn fourth place. At the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Doha, he claimed fifth place in the final (2.28m) while fellow American Dusty Jonas won the bronze.

At the Karlstad Grand Prix meet in Karlstad, Sweden on July 15, 2010 – also known as the "Stefan Holm Invitational" – Williams outdueled Linus Thornblad (the crowd favorite). The two were then the top two jumpers in 2010 and were tied through 2.22m, but Williams pulled ahead with a first try clearance of 2.25, and won with another first attempt clearance at 2.28m (7' 6", which Thornblad failed to clear). Williams finished the meet with three tries at 2.31. At the 2010 USA Outdoor Championships, Williams jumped 2.26 meters on his first attempt, with no misses in the competition at any height, for the gold medal. Later that year he took second place in the inaugural Diamond League, having 13 points against Russia's Ivan Ukhov who had 20 points.

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