Athletes World
Lionel Coetzee
On this week’s Athletes World episode, we are joined by long jump specialist Lionel Coetzee.Coetzee broke the national long jump record at Athletics Namibia’s Senior National Championships earlier this year. The long-standing record by two-time Olympian Stephan Louw was set back in 2008 at 8.24m.
Coetzee beat that with a spectacular jump and now the record stands at 8.27m.
Born in Rehoboth, Coetzee matriculated from De Duine Secondary School in 2015, and currently lives in Kuisebmond.
His journey with long jump started in 2018, when he started to compete in athletics.
Apart from being the current national long jump record holder, Coetzee is a two-time Namibian record holder and was an all-African Games 2019 long jump finalist in Morocco.
In addition to winning a silver at the World Athletics Bronze Continental Tour event in Gaborone, he is also a 100-metre silver medalist at the Namibia senior nationals.
Here on Athletes World, he shares some tips on how he gets to reach such impressive heights during his long jump and talks about the challenges and hard work that comes with it.