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"I am very happy with the medals but I am
missing that 'WR' (world record)," the double Olympic champion
told Reuters.
"That's the only reason I am in the sport."
From the day training started in November to his last
competition of the year, Taylor said "that is what I am chasing,
that world record".
The 27-year-old came agonizingly close to achieving that goal at
the 2015 world championships, failing by just eight centimeters
to match Briton Jonathan Edwards' long-standing mark with a leap
of 18.21 meters.
Now comes London.
"I think my world record could go there," Edwards told Reuters
of his 1995 milestone in March.
And if it does, it could dampen the day for the British jumper
turned broadcaster.
"I've looked at the schedule," Edwards said. "August 10. My
son's birthday... a double blow. That'll be a bad birthday
present."
While Taylor yearns for the record, "trying to be as respectful
as possible because the distance has stood there 20 plus years,"
he said.
Competitiveness, he said, was his greatest asset.
"I'm sure not going to say I am stronger than Jonathan, faster
than Jonathan. More experienced," Taylor said.
Yet the American has four of the nine longest jumps in history
and is more than likely the only triple jumper to earn Olympic
gold using different takeoff legs.
POTENTIAL RECORD
Left knee pain prompted the switch to a right-leg takeoff in
2013, a year after winning his first Olympic gold in London off
his left leg.
"I didn't want to do injections, I didn't want to do knee
surgeries," Taylor said. "So we thought outside the box and made
the switch."
Not only did the Georgia native who trains in the Netherlands
save his career, the move led to a second world title in 2015
and another Olympic gold in 2016.
His four longest jumps also have come from a right-leg launch,
including the number three leap of all-time, an 18.11m effort in
May that rekindled world record talk.
"I love to be in the conversation of the world record because
that means that someone or several people see that there is
potential," Taylor said.
U.S. team mate Will Claye and Cuban Pedro Pablo Pichardo, who
upset Taylor at last month's Diamond League meet in Lausanne,
appear to be the American's strongest challengers in London.
Then he will head off to the French resort of Tignes, not to ski
but to enjoy the benefits of competing at altitude where
rarefied air favors jumpers.
Should he surpass Edwards and set a new mark on Aug. 16, Taylor
would not consider it as a record, though.
"It would always be with an asterisk," he said, because of the
altitude.
Wherever the record comes, if it does, Taylor already knows what
his next challenge will be -- an all-out assault on how fast he
can run a flat 400 meters.
"No one has gone from at the top of the triple jump to the 400,"
the 45-second runner said.
"Many of the American triple jumpers in the past were great 200
meters runners. Not many 400 meters runners, especially in the
44 (second) region.
"This is what I am chasing. To do something quite different."
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