Jordan, who was born with a foreshortened left arm, was a sporting ground-breaker even before he turned to Para athletics because, in his teens, he was the first one-handed player to play basketball for Ireland.
A chance meeting with Jason Smyth at a disability conference persuaded him to try other sports at a Paralympic Ireland Expo. He started practising high jump at his local track where his coach Tomas Griffin, a former sprinter and long jumper, spotted him and offered to coach him.
Jordan first competed in an Irish athletics’ vest in 2017 after just four months of training for high jump and, within a year, he had won a bronze medal at the 2018 European Championships.
He finished sixth at the 2019 Worlds Championship and fourth at this year’s European Championships in Poland in June.
His personal best of 1:95m dates from the Irish National Championships (able-bodied) in 2019 and the European record in his event is 1:97m so he is not far off it.
He jumped his season best of 1:87m in the European final and that ranks him 11th in the world this year in his event.
He is studying Health and Leisure in Adapted Physical Activity on a part-time basis at the Institute of Technology, Tralee to allow him concentrate on training and this is his first Paralympics.
