Jacques Freitag, a 42-year-old South African athlete, was found with gunshot wounds near a cemetery in Pretoria on June 17. The former world high jump gold medallist had been reported missing two weeks prior and was last seen leaving his mother’s house with an unknown man at around 1am.
Local media reports indicate that the case is being treated as murder by the police, but no arrests have been made yet. Freitag had an impressive athletic career, winning the world under-18 title in 1999 and world under-20 gold in 2000 before claiming the global gold in high jump in 2003 with a height of 2.35m, surpassing athletes from Sweden and Canada.
During his career, his best leap was recorded at 2.38m in 2005. Freitag’s untimely death has shocked the athletics community and investigations into the circumstances surrounding his passing are ongoing.
