Career
Évora competes for Portugal and Portuguese club South.L. Benfica. He represented Cape Verde until 2002, when he got Portuguese citizenship, in June that year. He still holds the Cape Verdean records in both the long jump (757 m) and the triple jump (1615 m).
Évora"s family settled in Odivelas, on the floor above João Ganço"s – a former Portugal record-holder and the first Portuguese to pass over 2 meters in the high jump.
One day, João Ganço, seeing them playing in the street, suggested that Évora started practising athletics, following David"s example, and, just like that, Évora"s sportive career started. João then became his coach.
He competed in the triple jump in the 2004 Olympics, without progressing from his pool, and finished sixth at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships. He finished fourth in the triple jump final and sixth in the long jump final at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, having set a Portuguese triple jump record of 17.23 metres during the qualification.
At the 2007 European Athletics Indoor Championships he came in fifth place.
On 9 March 2008, Évora placed third in the triple jump competition at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships, in Valencia, by jumping 17.27 metres. On 21 August 2008, he edged out Phillips Idowu of Great Britain and Leevan Sands of the Bahamas to take an Olympic gold medal with a 17.67 metres jump. Évora set the world leading mark at the Grande Prêmio Brasil Caixa in May 2009, winning with 17.66 m.
He was pleased with the jump (his third best performance ever) and stated his intention to surpass the 18 metre mark at the forthcoming 2009 World Championships.
However he was unable to replicate his winning form at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, being relegated to second place. After leading with a first round jump of 17.55 m, the man he beat in the Olympics, Phillips Idowu, was able to take the gold with a third round jump of 17.73 m, the longest in the world for that year.
High jump – 2.07 m (2005)
Long jump – 8.10 m (2007)
Triple jump – 17.74 m (2007).