Carolina Klüft sport athletics
Carolina Evelyn Klüft (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈklʏfːt]; born 2 February 1983) is a retired Swedish track and field athlete who competed in the heptathlon, pentathlon, long jump and triple jump. She was an Olympic Champion, having won the heptathlon title in 2004. She was also a three-time World heptathlon champion, World Indoor pentathlon champion, a two-time European heptathlon champion and a two-time European Indoor pentathlon champion. Klüft is the only athlete ever to win three consecutive world titles in the heptathlon (2003, 2005, 2007). She was unbeaten in 22 heptathlon and pentathlon competitions from 2002 to 2007, her entire combined events career as a senior athlete, winning nine consecutive gold medals in major championships.Klüft first rose to prominence by winning the heptathlon at the 2002 European Championships and setting a new world junior record of 6,542 points. She then won the 2003 World Championships, becoming the third athlete ever to score over 7,000 points. She is the European record holder for heptathlon with a personal best of 7,032 points. This score ranks her second on the all-time heptathlon points score list, behind Jackie Joyner-Kersee who set the world record of 7,291 points.Besides having been a world class heptathlete, Klüft also had international success in the long jump event. She won the bronze medal at the 2004 World Indoor Championships in Budapest and finished fourth at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu.
On 2 September 2012 at the Finland-Sweden Athletics International, Klüft officially ended her career and retired from sports.Personal life and profile
Born in Sandhult, Västergötland, Klüft grew up in Växjö, where her father, mother and three sisters still live. She currently lives in Norrköping together with her husband Patrik Klüft, who is a former pole vaulter. They were married in September 2007 at Crichton Parish Church in Midlothian, Scotland.
Klüft comes from a family with sporting traditions: her father Johnny played professional football in the Swedish Allsvenskan and her mother was an international long jumper. She started out playing football herself but took up athletics at the age of twelve. She has described being subjected to bullying at school after moving to Växjö and subsequently using her athletic prowess to gain respect. Klüft took up the heptathlon in 2000 after coach Agne Bergvall suggested she had a future in it. Bergvall has been her main coach ever since.
Klüft is 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in) tall and weighs 65 kg (140 lb / 10.2 stone). Her physique was well-suited to multi-events: being tall and lean for the running and jumping events but also powerful enough to perform well in the shot put and javelin. She showed more natural ability in the jumping events, sprinting and hurdles, and steadily improved in the throwing events and 800 m and has been described as having no weaknesses across the seven events. This was demonstrated by her finishing in the top six in all disciplines of the 2007 World Championship heptathlon.She was also a member of the Swedish 4 × 100 m relay team at international competitions, and was part of the team that set the national record.
She was particularly friendly with British rival Kelly Sotherton, and the two were often be seen chatting during competitions. Klüft regularly lead the other heptathletes on a lap of honor after a major competition. She is often referred to by the nickname 'Carro' by people who know her.
When not training or competing, Klüft was a student at the Linnaeus University, studying Peace and Development. She visited areas of Sri Lanka hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake to make a film for Swedish TV and also sponsors children in Africa.
She was part of Reebok's "I am what I am" advertising campaign along with several other sports stars. She has been the focus of poster photography for Reebok, taken by celebrity photographer Jason Bell.Klüft was nominated for four consecutive Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year awards from 2005 to 2008.She had a mascot, a small stuffed toy representing Eeyore, that she took everywhere. Klüft claims that this was not for luck, but to remind her of her philosophy that sport is for fun.She is one of very few athletes to at some time hold all five available international titles: Olympic, World Outdoor, Regional (Europe in her case) Outdoor, World Indoor and Regional Indoor.Career
2002: First European heptathlon title
Klüft was an exceptional junior athlete. During the 2002 World Junior Championships in Athletics, at the age of 19, she set a world junior record by scoring 6,470 points. She captured her first major championship title at the 2002 European Championships in Munich with a score of 6,542 points, improving the world junior record in the process.2003: First world heptathlon title
A score of 4933 points secured the pentathlon title at the 2003 World Indoor Championships. Klüft followed this with personal bests and victories in the heptathlons in Götzis and Tallinn.
She won her first major outdoor title, the heptathlon at the 2003 World Championships in Paris with a score of 7,001 points, ahead of Eunice Barber, who had 6,755 points. Klüft thus became the third woman ever to break the 7,000-point barrier in the heptathlon. She set six personal bests in the seven disciplines including a 1.94 m high jump and a 200 m run of 22.98 s. At one stage she was on the brink of elimination from the competition after overstepping on the first two of her three long jump attempts but ended up recording the best jump of the competition with 6.68 m. She was later awarded the Waterford Crystal European Athlete of the Year Trophy 2003. That same year, Klüft also received the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal.
athletics competitive physical activity physical competition