Commonwealth Day: gold medallists share memories from previous Commonwealth Games birminghammail.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from birminghammail.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Venezuelan athlete Yulimar Rojas broke the record for the farthest triple jump (female) (indoors) with 15.43 meters (50 feet 7.4 inches) in the Meeting Villa of Madrid in Madrid, Spain; a title that was officialized by Guinness World Records.
2: Romania, Cuba
1: Britain, Belarus, Portugal, Uganda, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, South Africa, Qatar, Ecuador, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Bahrain, Ukraine, Germany
The first thing to note is the sheer globalisation of the sport in recent decades. Where the same few nations tend to dominate at the top of medal tables, there are a greater number of nations producing global medal-standard athletes than ever before. Two of the most recent indoor world records (both from triple jump) came from Venezuela and Burkina Faso - two countries with almost no athletics heritage whatsoever.
Greater competition is simply making it much, much harder to claim world records and the pot-luck nature of producing the type of talent to break a world record is shown by the spread of countries above.