Christian Taylor dazzles to win triple jump gold

Olympic champion Christian Taylor produced the second-longest jump of all time to claim triple jump gold at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing this afternoon.

The pre-tournament talk surrounded whether Taylor and Pedro Pablo Pichardo could rival Jonathan Edwards's long-standing world record, and the American came closer than anyone else to breaking it with his final jump of the contest.

The American recorded a mammoth leap of 18.21m - just eight centimetres off the record - to storm to the gold medal ahead of Pichardo, whose best on the night was 17.73m.

That was enough to earn the Cuban a second consecutive silver medal at the World Championships, while Portugal's Nelson Evora picked up the bronze at the Bird's Nest Stadium.