We chat to the British long jumper about the lessons learned from an eventful senior international debut.

It was the most-read article on athleticsweekly.com across the World Indoor Championships: British long jumper's World Indoor debut marred by officiating blunder. The featured athlete, Molly Palmer, was representing Great Britain at senior level for the first time. ‘The 22-year-old took off and was flying through the air when she suddenly realised the sand hadn't been raked following the previous athlete's attempt,’ wrote Jason Henderson at the time.

The subsequent questions have been inevitable but well-intentioned. “Did you not see the hole in the pit?” she has been asked on multiple occasions. Most people – and Palmer is keen to point out that they’re not typically ‘athletics people’ – are genuinely astonished that such a bizarre situation could unfold without the athlete being aware of it. 

“You just don't think that the pit won’t be raked at a major competition, so it's not something that crossed my mind at all,” she says. “The first thing that came into my head was: ‘Was the pit actually raked or am I just being dramatic?’”

Given her injury history and the risk posed by the unraked pit, that would certainly have been understandable. Instead, however, the Lukasz Zawila-coached athlete dealt with the situation with a maturity beyond her years. She went on to finish tenth with 6.49m, her third-best jump ever. It was a solid performance after such a stressful opener.

“I don't think many athletes will have had to deal with [the unraked pit] so the first 10 minutes of my debut was an experience in itself,” she admits. “It shows that I’ve developed as an athlete because I think the old me would have been so stressed. I'm disappointed with the distance, but I learned a lot from the experience. No one thought I'd be having an indoor season at all, so just to get to the World Indoors was incredible.”

Palmer’s winter was certainly not textbook. Having torn her hamstring at the JBL Jump Fest in Slovakia in June 2025 (she had recorded a then-personal best of 6.51m earlier in the competition) and missing out on the European U23 Championships that summer, she committed to an intense rehabilitation programme and returned to competition with a 60m in Loughborough – where she is in her final year at university studying human biology – in December. 

While hugely disappointed with her 6.22m long jump performance at the UK Indoor Championships in February, she returned to competition one week later in Cardiff where she jumped a lifetime best of 6.68m off very little jump-specific training. 

“I’m really excited for what's to come,” says the former gymnast whose parents both competed in gymnastics internationally.

Given her career history – she had previously only competed for GB & NI at the 2022 World Athletics U20 Championships – Palmer’s experience at the World Indoors is one that will stand her in good stead for whatever challenges she might face on or off the track at future competitions. 

She had gone to Poland “terrified” at the thought of media duties, having never been media trained or had to do interviews, but returned home having enjoyed that process, confident in her new-found ability to show off her personality and tell her story.

“I think you could probably tell in my interviews that I was very happy out there,” she says. 

“When [team captain Georgia Hunter Bell] did the team speech it made me realise that anything is possible. Her own story's incredible but listening to her made me feel more confident that I can hopefully get to the Europeans and Commonwealths this summer. I know there are a lot of good jumpers in the country so I need to be competitive but I'm excited for that because I really like a competitive environment. I missed out last year because of my injury, but my experiences since then have definitely made me a better athlete.”

Q: If you could choose one person to train or compete with, past or present, who would it be and why?

A: Jaz Sawyers. I know it's really cliché as a long jumper, but she’s such an inspiration to me. She’s so dedicated in training and everything is done with intent. If I was training with her I'd learn a lot from her. She’s also very supportive and a really genuine person. She texts me if I've done well at a competition and she always wants the best for you.