ATLANTA — (Editor's note: The video above this story is from a 2021 report on Keturah Orji ahead of the Olympics that year.)
Keturah Orji, the former UGA star and two-time Olympian, notched her third straight gold medal winning performance in the triple jump at the U.S. Indoor Championships over the weekend.
Orji bested the field with a distance of 14.50 meters (47 feet 6 and 3/4 inches). It was her longest distance in winning this event three years in a row.
The victory doesn't affect whether Orji will make Team USA or not -- those places will be determined at the U.S. Olympic trials in June -- but it does signal that the former Bulldog is on track for her third straight trip to the Olympics.
"CONSISTENCY. IS. NOT. EASY.🗣️ To most, this is just another US title, but the people closest to me know how much this means to me," Orji wrote on Instagram. "I’ve said this before in my blog and I’ll say it again 'Showing up to championships and performing at a high level over and over and over and over again is not easy.'"
Her post added: "Thank God, thank you to my coach @youngjumps , thank you to my training partners who believed in me more than I believed in myself, thank you to everyone who is praying for me (keep praying 😅🙏🏾) & thank you to everyone who is a fan🤎 Imma give myself my flowers since all the other track pages aren’t gonna hype me up for this accomplishment 🥱💐💐💐 #OneLastTime"
Orji was a seven-time tripe jump national champion for the Bulldogs between 2015-18. She finished fourth in the event at the 2016 Rio Olympics and seventh at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The 27-year-old also won a silver medal at the 2019 Pan American Games and 2022 North American, Central American and Caribbean Championships.