'Blessed to be alive': Tara Davis-Woodhall in head-on crash days before Ultimate Championship

Olympic and world long jump champion Tara Davis-Woodhall has revealed she suffered a concussion after being involved in a head-on car crash while driving to a training session last week, putting her participation in next week's World Athletics Ultimate Championship in doubt.

The 27-year-old American shared details of the accident during a call with reporters on Wednesday and posted dashcam footage of the crash on social media. The clip shows another vehicle turning out of a parking lot into her lane before colliding almost head-on with her car. Both vehicles were travelling at around 20 miles per hour, and the impact deployed the airbags in both.

"I'm lucky and blessed to be alive right now, and no life-threatening injuries," Davis-Woodhall said, sharing images of bruises on her arms.


She said she has not trained since the crash and is working with her medical team to assess her readiness for the event. "It's really unfortunate timing," she said, adding that she had been at the peak of her training before the accident. She described the mental toll as harder to shake than the physical one, saying she was taking her recovery "day by day."

Davis-Woodhall, who is married to Paralympic sprinter Hunter Woodhall and is among track and field's most-followed athletes, is also the lead content creator for the World Athletics Ultimate Championship, an inaugural event scheduled for September 11 to 13 in Budapest. The meet carries a total prize pool of 10 million dollars, the largest in track and field history, with 150,000 dollars awarded to each event winner.

Her road to two world titles

Davis-Woodhall won long jump gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics with a distance of 7.10 metres and successfully defended her world title at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. She had earlier taken silver at the 2023 World Championships, held in the same city hosting next week's Ultimate Championship, a result she has credited with fuelling her rise to Olympic and world glory in the years since.

Should Davis-Woodhall be ruled out, attention in the women's long jump field is expected to turn to Italy's Larissa Iapichino, who finished runner-up to the American at the Prefontaine Classic earlier this year with a jump of 7.12 metres.

(With inputs from AP)