Jazmin Sawyers

Early life and career

Born in Stoke-on-Trent to a Jamaican father and an English mother, Sawyers was initially a child gymnast, participating in the sport from the age of four. At ten years old she began to take part in athletics events at school and decided to start practising in various events.

As part of City of Stoke Athletics Club, she focused mainly on high jump and long jump. At the 2007 English Schools Championships she was the high jump runner-up with a personal best of 1.70 m (5 ft 6 ³⁄₄ in), finishing behind Katarina Johnson-Thompson. The following year she won the English Schools' titles in the long jump and the pentathlon – a feat she repeated in 2009. In 2010, she won a scholarship to study at Millfield public school.

Sawyers studied for a degree in law at Bristol University.

Youth and junior medals

Her first international appearances came in 2011. At the 2011 World Youth Championships in Athletics she placed ninth in the heptathlon. She cleared six metres in the long jump for the first time that year and surpassed that mark to win the gold in the event at the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games. She was also a 4×100 metres relay champion with England at that event. She was also approached by the British Bobsleigh Association that year to train for the inaugural Youth Winter Olympics. Acting as brakewoman, she formed a two-man bob team with Mica McNeil. In January 2012 she represented Great Britain at the bobsleigh at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics and Sawyers and McNeil became the country's first ever medal-winning team at the competition (and the only medallists for Britain that year), taking the silver medals behind the Dutch team. As a result, she was chosen as one of the carriers for the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay.

Sawyers' bobsleigh training at the start of the year meant she was ill-prepared for heptathlon in the summer of 2012. She opted to focus on the long jump instead, as this combined well with the explosive strength training she had undertaken for the winter sport. This proved to be a successful switch as she set a personal best of 6.64 m (21 ft 9 ¹⁄₄ in) to place third at the UK Athletics Championships and also set the world-leading junior mark. Sawyers was the bronze medallist at the 2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics – her distance of 6.67 m (21 ft 10 ¹⁄₂ in) was beaten only by the wind-assisted jumps of British rival Katerina Johnson-Thompson and Germany's Lena Malkus. Her performance was the second best wind-legal jump by a junior woman that year.

Sawyers gained a place at the University of Sheffield and began training there as well with local coach Tony Minichiello. She continued her focus on the long jump into the 2013 season. She was runner-up at the BUCS university championships indoor and outdoors. She repeated that placing at her two major events that year, taking silver behind Shara Proctor at the UK Championships then another silver at the 2013 European Athletics Junior Championships behind Malaika Mihambo of Germany. At the end of the track and field season she won her first meet abroad at the Gugl Games in Linz, Austria. She changed university to study law and criminology at Bristol University. She based her training near the University of Bath, however, working with coach and former long jumper Alan Lerwill.

2014 Commonwealth Games medal

At the start of 2014 she set an indoor best of 6.44 m (21 ft 1 ¹⁄₂ in) to place second the Johnson-Thompson at the UK Athletics Indoor Championships. Outdoors, she had a string of victories (including a win at the universities championships) in the buildup to the 2014 European Team Championships, where she placed ninth overall. She was again second best to Johnson-Thompson at the outdoor national championships but both gained selection for the long jump for England at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. However, Johnson-Thompson withdrew prior to the championships and the other leading English athlete Proctor could not compete in the final due to injury, making Sawyer's England's leading medal hope. At the competition in Glasgow her final round jump of 6.54 m (21 ft 5 ¹⁄₄ in) was a season's best and resulted in a silver medal – her first international senior medal and just two centimetres behind winner Ese Brume.

Other activities

Sawyers is a singer/songwriter in her spare time and, in February 2017 appeared in ITV's The Voice UK. She was successful in securing Will.i.am as her coach during the 'blind auditions', though she told the programme her main priority remained with athletics. She was eliminated from the programme on 26 February in a sing-off against fellow singer Hayley Eccles.