Para-athlete Fleur Jong wants two medals in Paris: “I had to learn how to win”
Over the past two Paralympic Games, UvA student Fleur Jong (28) grew as a top athlete. She now knows who she is and what she wants on the athletics track in Paris: two medals. “Now when I break a record or win something, I can really enjoy it.”
She looks relaxed and happy, with still a month to go before the Paralympic Games in Paris. Fleur Jong, in a black top from her personal sponsor Under Armour, is no longer letting the grandeur of the Paralympics surprise or unsettle her at her third Games. Meanwhile, she is the woman to beat with her world record in both the long jump and the 100m dash.
Yet she does not suffer from the pressure that comes with it. “I do find it an honour that people are now looking up to me. It means that I have done a lot of things right over the past few years. Meanwhile, I am 28 and that role is also landing in fertile ground. Now when I break a record or win something, I can really enjoy it. I stay more true to myself then and am less concerned with what others think about it.”
Just before her seventeenth birthday, Fleur Jong got a bacterial infection that caused her feet and several fingers to be amputated. After her rehabilitation, she switched from dance and tennis to athletics when she was scouted at a NOC*NSF talent day for paralympic athletes. Less than three years later, she competed for the first time at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Best of both worlds
It wasn’t always like that. When Fleur Jong, who had just turned 20, took part in the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro for the first time, she didn’t know what to expect. “Top sport was still so new to me and then the Paralympics are top sport times a hundred.” She marvelled at the grandeur and craziness of the Games, such as the Paralympic village built especially for the athletes. And the routinized athletes around her, who seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
The uncertainty about who Jong herself was as an top athlete prevailed. “I experienced the pressure of wanting to be a “good top athlete”. How do you express that? And what kind of rituals does that involve? You always read that top athletes are stoic and always in full focus. I thought I should be like that too. But I’m not like that at all.”
So she preferred to keep her family and friends who came flying to Rio at a distance during the first Paralympics. But that turned out to be too boring, she now knows. “I do enjoy having contact with people from outside.” In Tokyo, five years later, Jong was open to the wider world. “But then the wide world (due to corona ed.) was unfortunately not at the Paralympics. I ended up enjoying that and benefiting from it: it made the Paralympics very intimate with the team. But in Paris I hope for the best of both worlds: openness to the outside world and at the same time the team feeling.”
Two medals
Jong does not want to come home empty-handed. In Tokyo, she already won a gold medal in the long jump, this year the goals are higher. “I want to get two medals anyway and I am going to do my best for two gold ones. In the long jump I am the defending champion, but in the 100-metres sprint I have never won a Paralympic medal, which is something I really want to do now. I am the defending world champion at that distance, though.”
That desire to win was not always there for Jong. “At first, I was mainly good at doing my personal task. That will get you a long way in most matches, but at the big tournaments it’s really about winning. That desire to win at all costs can also be a focus for a match, I really had to learn that.”
Jong also now knows what she needs to keep improving her performance. For instance, she also wants to participate in national championships and commercial competitions for non-disabled athletes. “The Netherlands is a super small country so then it is convenient to combine national championships. I think that can easily be done and I already managed to do so.”
Born: 17 December 1995 in Purmerend
UvA study: Bachelor communication sciences
Sport: Athletics (long jump and 100-metres dash)
Third Paralympic Games, after Rio de Janeiro (2016) and Tokyo (2021)
Goal in Paris: Gold in the long jump and a Paralympic medal in the 100-metres dash.
Best performance: World record holder in the long jump with 6m74 and in the 100m dash with 12.35 seconds in T62 class. Gold in long jump at the 2021 Tokyo Paralympic Games. Gold in both the 100m dash and long jump at the World Para-Atletics Championships in 2023 and 2024.
In 2022, she managed to participate in the NK with able-bodied athletes for the first time, although a lot of phone calls, e-mails and proposals preceded that. “That’s still not going smoothly, sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Bringing some consistency to that is now my biggest challenge.”
Pushing boundaries
For now it will not be the last Paralympic Games for Jong, who wants to continue until Los Angeles in 2028. “After that, I will have to see how things stand. But if it’s given to me and I still like it, why wouldn’t I continue for Brisbane?”
Will she not have won all the medals there are to win by then? De Jong doesn’t think so. “There is so much more to athletics than winning medals. It’s about absolute distances and times, allowing you to keep pushing boundaries. For a long time, it was said that the 100-metre dash on blades cannot go faster than 13 seconds. My world record now stands at 12.35 seconds and I ran 12.11 with too much wind. In the long jump, my record now stands at 6 meters 74. Could I jump 7 metres someday in my career? I wouldn’t know how yet, but I’m going to try.”
Fleur Jong starts in category T62/T64, for athletes with a double and single lower leg amputation. She starts the long jump on Saturday, August 31 at 11:18 am and the 100m on September 5 at 8:42 pm and September 6 final at 7:14 pm.
