Yamilé Aldama (© Getty Images)
The best Triple Jumper of the year in terms of performances, Yamile Aldama of Cuba was not present in Paris World Championships as she still awaits her new citizenships. Simon Turnbull met the fascinating young woman whose talent has yet to reach its climax
Running parallel with the escalator at Bank underground station in the centre of London is an advert for a financial institution featuring Minnie Minoso, the Chicago White Sox baseball legend who was known as ‘the Cuban Comet.’ The thrust of it is about “being in the right place at the right time.”
Across the road, past the Bank of England, settling down for lunch in a basement restaurant, Yamile Aldama gives an ironic laugh at the mention of it. The Cuban triple jumper might top the world performance list in her event for 2003, but as a resident of London’s east end for two years now she has found herself in the wrong place at the right time.
With another year to go before she fulfills the three-year residency qualification for British citizenship, and with no sign of the British Government fast-tracking her application (Zola Budd’s passport materialised in a record 13 days), the woman from Havana faces the prospect of losing out on another shot at a global title.
As an athlete in international limbo, Aldama has already missed the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Birmingham and the outdoor IAAF World Championships in Paris. Now the Athens Olympics seem destined to pass her by – unless the British Government can find it in its heart to bring forward her qualification date by three months, from November 2004 to August 2004.
Asked if she still has hope, the sleek 31-year-old puffs out her cheeks and shrugs her shoulders. “Well, it‘s difficult,” she says in her soft voice, her English only slightly halting. “Now it’s been two years and I’m losing my hopes. I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to train next year [without the target of the Olympic Games]. But I suppose I have to do it. It is very difficult.”
It has been difficult in other ways for Aldama since she arrived in London as a recently-wed in November 2001. In May this year her husband, Scotsman Andrew Dodds, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for drug trafficking offences. Aldama was cleared of any involvement, but the whole trauma of the case, and the fact that she been left alone to raise the couple’s two-year-old son, Amil, has added to the complications of her troubled life in England.
“Well, yes,” she says, “it has been very difficult. But you have to do it. You have to get on with it. You have to train. You have to think of the things that give you strength: my child, Amil. He is depending on me. So you cannot sit down and say, ‘I am going to leave or give up. That is not the way. You have to do it.”
And what Aldama has done in 2003, given her very trying circumstances, has been truly remarkable.
Starting the year with a four-year-old personal best of 14.77m, she has achieved ten jumps of 14.98m or better. She has also jumped the two farthest distances of the year – 15.29m at the IAAF Golden League meeting in Rome in July, 15.27m at the IAAF Grand Prix meeting in London in August – and enjoyed a 4-3 record on the summer circuit against Tatyana Lebedeva, the Russian who peaked her season to perfection with a 15.18m jump to win the IAAF World title in Paris.
So how on earth, with so many problems and frustrations, has she managed to do it? “Well, first of all, because of him,” Aldama says, gesturing towards the gentleman sitting to her left, her coach, Frank Attoh. “He is so hard. I have to fight with him every day. But training with him has been very, very good for me.”
It has indeed. Attoh might be a hard taskmaster at the training track but he is a highly affable soul with a clear, simplistic vision of what it takes to hop, step and jump great distances – and with a highly impressive record of putting his theories into practice.
As a self-coached athlete, he was a Great Britain international with a personal best of 16.00m, twice a AAA Championship bronze medallist but some 80cm short of the distance he required to qualify for a place at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. As a coach, the 47-year-old Londoner has guided two triple jumpers to within sight of the Olympic medal rostrum: Ashia Hansen, who was fourth place in the women’s competition in Atlanta in 1996, and Larry Achike, who was fifth in the men’s contest in Sydney in 2000.
He has done it in his spare-time too. Attoh is one of those coaching marvels who holds down a full-time job. He works as an engineer for British Telecom near Bank station. He coaches in the evenings at Copthall Stadium in north London.
“I can see a lot more potential in Yami,” he says. “I see maybe another 30cm to 40cm on top of what she has already done. It has been difficult for us this year. I’d be lying to you if I said it’s been easy.
“There was nothing to motivate us in terms of a major championship to aim for. And we didn’t know how well we could do because lots of the things that were happening in and around her life were out of our control.
“The only bit we could control was getting out on the track, training and then competing. And having done that, with all those problems, I hope next year it will be a lot easier. Hopefully, we’ll be able to focus a lot more on what she’s able to achieve.
“Technically, we haven’t been able to do all the things we hoped to this year. We have worked hard on Yami’s speed but she has only been able to do 80% of what we actually worked on. This is not boosting her up or anything, but she’s carried a hamstring injury since she jumped in South Africa in January.
“Speed is the key to it all. You can take that from watching what Jonathan Edwards has done. Speed and staying light are key to triple jumping.
“When I was first introduced to Yami, in December 2001, I said to her, ‘I remember you from Seville. You’re slow.’ I could remember her from the World Championships in 1999 [Aldama took the silver medal with 14.61m, behind Paraskevi Tsiamita of Greece]. I remember saying to Keith Connor, ‘Boy, if someone could get this girl to run faster, she could go a long way.’
“When I said that to her, it was almost like, ‘Who the heck are you to be saying that?’ But, fortunately for me, she’s listened and taken on board what we’re trying to do.
“We’ve achieved a lot in a short period of time, but we have to work on her technique too. Her jump phase at the moment in atrocious. We can improve it by 30cm, 35cm. We’ve got to move that on this winter. It will make a world of difference.”
Aldama has certainly got rhythm. Throughout the lunchtime meal and interview, she bops and sways to the sound of the background music. She can’t help signing along to the Barry White tape. “Can’t get enough of your love, babe,” she choruses, in between questions.
For all her problems, Aldama is clearly a woman at ease with herself and the world. She even paid to watch the women’s Triple Jump competitions at the IAAF World Indoor Championships and the outdoor IAAF World Championships. “I just wanted to be there,” she says. “I was not jumping, but at least I was there, watching it and enjoying the athletics – all the events, not just the women’s Triple Jump.”
In Birmingham in March she saw her coach’s former charge win the World indoor title in her event. Having coached Hansen up to 1997, Attoh is well placed to compare Aldama to the British number one and World indoor record holder, who missed the 2003 outdoor season because of injury.
“I think they’re both fantastic athletes,” he says. “I’ve been very, very fortunate to have worked with Ashia and now with Yami. There really isn’t much to choose between them. There are some similarities in character and also I would say they both have the wanting, the desire to win.
“I think with Yami, perhaps having had the harsher background, coming from Cuba, has make her more hungry. But I’m not trying to belittle Ashia. She’s proved herself over the years: World indoor champion, Commonwealth champion, World indoor record. She’s a phenomenal athlete.
“But I think on balance – and I probably might sound biased – Yami has produced the big jumps. And I think she’s capable of doing a lot more than she’s shown this year.”
Whether Yamile Aldama will get the chance to do it at the Athens Olympics, though, remains to be seen. Helsinki 2005, and the tenth IAAF World Championships, might have to be the right place and the right time for the adopted Londoner.
Simon Turnbull is the athletics correspondent for The Independent on Sunday
Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 4 - 2003
