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SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Tara Davis-Woodhall, a spirited American long jumper in a cowboy hat, won gold on a packed Thursday night of track and field here at the 2024 Olympic Games.

She jumped 7.10 meters, leaving the reigning Olympic champion and the rest of the field behind and winning her first Olympic title – and her first Olympic medal ever.

Germany’s Malaika Mihambo, the reigning gold medalist and two-time world champion, took silver with a jump of 6.98. Jasmine Moore of the US team took bronze with 6.96, becoming the first woman in a long time to win medals in the long jump and the triple jump (also bronze) at the same Games.

The star of the event, however, was Davis-Woodhall, a social media sensation who wowed crowds from the moment she strutted out of a tunnel and onto the track here at the Stade de France.

Davis-Woodhall, now 25, made her Olympic debut in Tokyo. She finished sixth, which would be a disappointment today, but back then it was a launching pad.

“I didn’t expect to be in Tokyo,” she said. “I was a college kid jumping around there just for fun.”

In the years that followed, she realized she could be more. She won her first national senior title at the 2023 Indoor Championships (but the title was later stripped after a positive cannabis test). In the summer of the same year, she took silver at the World Championships.

She went into 2024 as the favorite for a medal, but her road to Paris was anything but smooth. She said she hadn’t jumped for three weeks to recover from “a really bad bone bruise in my heel.” At the US trials, she qualified first with a 7-meter flat jump, but only after a moment of shock; her heel had not yet healed.

“I’m still dealing with it,” Davis-Woodhall said here in France. “But we live and learn, and we’re just going to go out here and do what we can do.”

She started with 6.93. After each jump, her American compatriot Jasmine Moore was a few centimeters better. But in the second round, Davis-Woodhall exceeded the 7-meter mark with 7.05 and established herself as the clear leader in the clubhouse.

Mihambo clocked 6.95 in Round 3, 0.01 seconds less than Moore and a full tenth of a second less than Davis-Woodhall. However, she crossed the free throw line in Round 4. Davis-Woodhall, jumping immediately after, improved to 7.10 seconds, extending her lead, which she maintained throughout all six rounds and took gold.