Jenna Baccari: Albertville’s All-Around Athlete Who Keeps Reinventing Herself
There is a certain kind of athlete who defies easy summary — the kind whose career refuses to settle into a single event, a single identity, or a single chapter. Jenna Baccari, born July 3, 2000, in the Savoie department of France, is that kind of athlete. Over more than a decade of competition with her hometown club, the Union Olympique Albertville Tarentaise (UOAT), she has been a junior heptathlete, a national-level long jumper and triple jumper, a regional sprint champion, and more recently a developing hurdler who broke the sub-15-second barrier in the 100m hurdles while still holding her own in the jumping events. She is also, in a detail that tells you something important about her character, a certified yoga teacher who runs her own studio in Albertville alongside her athletic career.
Jenna Baccari does not fit neatly in a box. That has always been part of what makes her interesting to watch.
Albertville Roots: A Town That Knows Sports
Albertville, Savoie, sits in the French Alps and has its own relationship with sporting excellence — it hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics, and the surrounding mountain landscape has produced more than its share of serious competitors across endurance sports, winter disciplines, and track and field. Growing up there, attached from her earliest competition years to the UOAT club, Jenna was part of a community that takes athletics seriously and celebrates its athletes warmly.
Her competitive record with the FFA — the Fédération Française d’Athlétisme — begins as far back as 2008 and 2009, placing her in the sport practically from childhood. By 2010, at ten years old, she was already registered for competition, a sign of early immersion in club athletics. The pattern of a young multi-event athlete developing across a wide range of disciplines is evident from the very start: the FFA database shows her competing in everything from the 50 meters and 1000 meters to throwing events, hurdles, and jumps throughout her early years.
Minimes and Cadettes: A Multi-Event Foundation
By 2014 and 2015, Jenna was competing in the minimes (under-14) category and making herself known as a polyvalent athlete. At the 2015 youth meeting in Arles, she put together a heptathlon-style set of performances — 50m, 80m hurdles, long jump, triple jump, shot put, high jump, javelin — earning 2,869 points and establishing records in several events for her age group. Her best 80m hurdles time that day was 13.69 seconds, her long jump reached 4.89m, and she recorded 7.16m in shot put. The variety was the point. She was building an athletic foundation that could eventually specialize, but that broad-based training in speed, power, coordination, and technique would serve her for years.
In the cadettes (under-16) category, she began to show where her natural aptitudes were strongest. In 2016, she won the departmental championship in triple jump with 10.64m and continued posting competitive times in the sprint events. By June 2016, she had run 13.39 seconds in the 100m — solid for a 15-year-old developing athlete — and was already expressing herself as someone who could compete meaningfully at multiple events. She was selected for a regional federation training camp in Hauteville (Ain) during the summer of 2016, a recognition from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes league of her potential in the triple jump after a podium finish at the regional championship.
The Junior Years: First Major Breakthroughs (2017–2019)
Moving into the juniors (under-20) category, Jenna began collecting genuine regional titles and pushing toward national qualification. The 2017 season showed continued steady improvement: a triple jump of 11.18m at the regional championships earned her third place and a podium, while her sprint times improved. By December 2017, she had set new indoor personal bests across 60m (8.21), triple jump (10.99m), and long jump (5.08m) at the Lyon indoor facility — the Halle Stéphane Diagana at Lyon-La Duchère, which would become a recurring venue in her career.
The 2018 season was where the breakthroughs began arriving with real weight. In January, she ran 8.19 seconds in the indoor 60m at Lyon and improved her long jump to 5.40m indoors. By May, she had run 26.11 seconds in the 200m at Grenoble — a personal record that has stood as her lifetime best at that distance. In June at Albertville, she ran 12.54 in the 100m — solid junior territory. The big moments came in July. At a regional meeting in Vénissieux, she long-jumped to 5.83m in favourable conditions, and the following week at the national youth championships (Championnats de France Jeunes) in Évry-Bondoufle, she competed in both triple jump and long jump at the national level for the first time. In triple jump qualifying, she set a new club all-categories record with 11.77m — not quite enough to make the final by just four centimetres — but in long jump she cleared 5.60m to reach the final, ultimately placing tenth nationally with 5.48m. The club’s website captured the moment simply: two new club records, a national final, and a debut on the biggest French junior stage.
The autumn and winter of 2018–2019 brought more progress. At the Nocturn’Express Albertville meeting in July 2019 — the club’s own flagship summer evening competition — she reached 5.50m in long jump and 11.71m in triple jump. The indoor season that year saw her win multiple regional titles: in January 2019, she claimed the junior ARA (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) regional championship in both triple jump (11.74m, indoors) and long jump. In February she competed at the Championnats de France Junior indoors in Liévin, finishing 15th in long jump (5.40m) and competing in triple jump. At the regional championships in June 2019, she added the outdoor triple jump and long jump titles for the juniors in her region — ARA champion in both events, with marks of 12.10m (triple) and 5.49m (long). By summer, she had long-jumped 5.74m outdoors at Bourgoin-Jailleu, and in the 100m ran a lifetime best of 12.52 seconds (wind-assisted) and 12.53 (legal, +1.0 wind) at Saint-Étienne.
A Club Change and the Espoirs Years (2019–2022)
In the 2019-2020 indoor season, Jenna moved briefly to AS Aix-les-Bains, a nearby club, representing them through the espoirs (under-23) category. The transition did not interrupt her momentum. At Lyon in January 2020, she set new personal bests at 60m (7.95 seconds, still her lifetime best at that distance) and in the indoor long jump (5.68m) — and won both the ARA espoirs regional titles for indoor 60m and indoor triple jump on the same day. In the triple jump she jumped 12.25m indoors at Aubière, and at the same meet took the indoor long jump regional title with 5.68m. It was the kind of concentrated double performance that signals an athlete peaking.
The 2020 outdoor season, abbreviated by the COVID-19 pandemic like every competition programme in Europe that year, nonetheless produced Jenna’s career-best triple jump: on August 5, 2020, at Bourgoin-Jailleu, she reached 12.50 meters — a mark that still stands as her official outdoor personal best and her lifetime best at the event. Two days later, she ran 12.82 in the 100m at the same venue, her equal-best legal performance at that distance. It was as complete a summer as the circumstances allowed, and the triple jump best has become the benchmark she has been working back toward.
The 2020-2021 period brought more club movement. Jenna represented EA Chambéry for a spell — the Entente Athlétique de Chambéry — before settling back at UOAT. In May 2021, still with AS Aix-les-Bains, she set her lifetime long jump personal best: 5.84 meters at Balan, with a legal +2.0m/s wind reading. That jump, achieved in her espoirs category, still stands as her official long jump personal record on the World Athletics database.
A Brief Interlude, Then the Return to Form (2022–2023)
The 2022 season was disrupted — representing EA Chambéry again, her triple jump fell to just 10.97m outdoors as she worked through what appeared to be either a form dip or a transitional period between clubs and coaching setups. But the indoor season showed resilience: 11.56m in the triple jump indoors, and second place at the ARA indoor regional championship.
The return to UOAT and coach Patrice Paquier brought a clear resurgence. In January 2023, she jumped 11.80m in the triple jump indoors at Lyon and 5.75m in the long jump — solid performances by any measure. In February 2023, competing at the inter-leagues match in Lyon, she triple-jumped 13.71m — a figure that appears in the UOAT club records archive, though it should be noted this was not recorded as a legal official mark in conditions that would count for the FFA rankings, given it was flagged accordingly. Her officially recognised best for the season was 12.47m outdoors at Balan in June 2023, maintaining her trajectory. She won the ARA senior regional triple jump (indoor) title in January 2023 and the Savoie/Haute-Savoie two-department championship in both long jump and triple jump that spring. At the French National Championships (second division, senior women) indoors at Miramas in February 2023, she competed in both long jump and triple jump, finishing eighth in the long jump final with 5.54m — her first national-level senior final.
2024: A Pivot Toward the Hurdles
The 2024 season brought something genuinely new. After years as a pure horizontal jumper, Jenna began adding the 100m hurdles to her programme — a natural extension for an athlete with her speed, spring, and heptathlon background. Her first significant outdoor 100m hurdles result, 15.63 seconds at Thonon-les-Bains in April 2024, was a starting point. She was simultaneously maintaining her jumping form: she triple-jumped 12.49m at the Chambéry meeting in June 2024 (one centimetre short of her personal best and a new club record), and long-jumped 5.72m legally at Grenoble, as well as a wind-assisted 5.80m at Aix-les-Bains. In March 2024, at the French National Indoor Championships (second division) in Saint-Brieuc, she jumped 12.34m in the triple and 5.81m in the long — placing third in the triple jump nationally in her division, earning her the first national podium of her senior career.
On the indoor side, she also competed in the 60m hurdles with the senior standard barriers for the first time in December 2024, clocking 9.31 seconds at Lyon — a personal best and, significantly, a performance that World Athletics registered in her profile as a notable mark.
2025: Breaking Barriers, Literally
The 2025 season delivered perhaps the most emphatic single performance of Jenna’s career in her new event. On May 25, 2025, at the Championnat des 2 Savoie in Chambéry, she ran 14.94 seconds in the 100m hurdles — becoming the first female UOAT athlete to break the 15-second mark at that event, and setting a personal best that now sits as her career record. The club’s website noted it simply and enthusiastically: “Jenna Baccari passe sous les 15″ au 100m haies en 14″94.” In the context of French athletics, 14.94 seconds is a genuinely competitive senior women’s hurdling time that announces serious intent.
She continued competing in the jumps as well. In May 2025, she triple-jumped 12.25m at Grenoble; in June at Saint-Étienne she long-jumped 5.60m for third place at the regional championship. The February 2025 indoor season had included a triple jump of 11.98m at the Championnats de France in Nantes, and a second-place finish at the ARA indoor regional triple jump championship with 11.85m.
The World Athletics profile for 2025, reflecting the ongoing transition in her competitive focus, lists her primary events now as long jump, 100m hurdles, and 60m hurdles — a meaningful shift from her earlier designation as primarily a triple jumper.
2026: Continuing Development
The 2026 season is underway. At Lyon in January 2026, Jenna ran 27.49 seconds in the 200m short track — winner of the R1-level final — and in December 2025 at Lyon competed in the 60m hurdles with the senior (84cm) barriers, clocking 9.54 seconds. The hurdles work continues to deepen, and her long jump remains an active part of her competitive portfolio.
Her World Athletics global ranking currently stands at approximately #1897 in the women’s long jump — an entry that reflects her consistent regional-level competition rather than high-volume international results. Her athlete code on World Athletics is 14752462. On the FFA’s national level classification, she has been rated at N3 or N4 (the upper tiers of French national competition standard) in the triple jump consistently from 2019 through 2024, and is currently rated at IR2 in the hurdle events as she builds that discipline.
Personal Bests and Career Statistics
As of May 2026, Jenna Baccari’s confirmed personal bests are as follows:
- Triple jump (outdoor): 12.50m — August 5, 2020, Bourgoin-Jailleu
- Long jump (outdoor): 5.84m (+2.0) — May 29, 2021, Balan
- Long jump (indoor): 5.81m — March 2, 2024, Saint-Brieuc
- 100m hurdles: 14.94 (+0.4) — May 25, 2025, Chambéry (personal best and club record)
- 60m hurdles (indoor, senior barriers): 9.31 — December 22, 2024, Lyon
- 60m (indoor): 7.95 — January 12, 2020, Lyon
- 100m: 12.52 (wind-assisted) / 12.53 (legal) — June 2019, Saint-Étienne
- 200m: 26.11 (+1.6) — May 5, 2018, Grenoble
Her most significant national title is the ARA regional senior champion title in indoor triple jump (2023), with multiple additional regional titles in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes across different age categories. She reached a national senior podium (3rd, national second division) in the indoor triple jump at the 2024 Championnats de France at Saint-Brieuc. She also has multiple department-level (Savoie/Haute-Savoie) championship titles across long jump, triple jump, and sprint events.
Club, Coaching, and the Savoie Athletics Community
Jenna has spent the overwhelming majority of her career at the Union Olympique Albertville Tarentaise — the UOAT — with one brief period at AS Aix-les-Bains (2019–2021) and a short stint at EA Chambéry (2021–2022) before returning home. Her current coach is Patrice Paquier. Earlier in her junior years she was coached by Adrien Pellicer, who accompanied her to the 2018 national championships and is credited in the club’s reporting from that era.
The UOAT is a community club in every meaningful sense — a volunteer-run structure that organises its own competitions (the Nocturn’Express evening meeting each summer has been a fixture on the regional calendar for more than a decade), runs a youth athletics school, and chronicles its athletes’ achievements with obvious pride on its club website. Jenna has been a central figure in the club’s story across multiple generations of its membership, someone whose longevity and consistency have made her something of an institution in her own right.
Life Beyond the Track: Yoga, Modelling, and Multiple Identities
One of the more striking aspects of Jenna Baccari’s public profile is that she presents herself on her own terms as a multidimensional person rather than simply an athlete. Her Instagram bio — @jenna.baccari, with over 7,600 followers — describes her as a “Pro model — Athlete — Yoga teacher,” with a contact email for professional inquiries and a link to her yoga studio account (@studio.yogajenna). Her Facebook page, which she uses primarily to promote her yoga teaching, describes her as a yoga teacher based in Albertville.
She is a 200-hour certified yoga teacher, registered with Yoga Alliance International, and operates her own studio in Albertville — Studio Yoga Jenna — alongside her athletics career. The combination of athletic training and yoga instruction is not as unusual as it might seem: many athletes find yoga a natural complement to performance training, and for someone whose career has always involved the kind of proprioceptive precision required by jumping events and hurdles, the connection between the disciplines is intuitive. That she has turned it into a professional vocation speaks to the seriousness with which she approaches it.
She also maintains a TikTok presence (@jenna.baccari) where she has posted content combining athletic training, morning routine footage, yoga practice, and lifestyle content — building an audience that reflects her diverse interests.
What the Career Tells Us
Looking at Jenna Baccari’s career as a whole, what emerges is a portrait of sustained athletic engagement on her own terms. She has not pursued a narrow specialist’s path. She has competed across a genuinely wide range of events — from 50m sprints to 1000m runs in her youth, from shot put and javelin to multi-jumps and now hurdles — and she has maintained competitive relevance at the regional and national level across multiple different event profiles for over a decade.
The shift toward the hurdles in 2024 and 2025 is arguably the most interesting development of her senior career. The 14.94 in the 100m hurdles at Chambéry in May 2025 is the kind of mark that opens new competitive doors: it is a time that places her in the conversation for regional and potentially national-level senior competition in that event, where her background in speed and spring gives her natural tools. Whether she pursues the hurdles as a primary event, continues as a multi-discipline athlete, or finds some other configuration is an open question — but the pattern of her career suggests she will approach whatever comes next with the same quiet determination that has characterised everything she has done so far.
From the regional youth championships in 2017 to a national podium in 2024, and now to sub-15-second hurdles at 24 years old, Jenna Baccari has built something that resists easy summary. That might be the most accurate thing you can say about her.
Jenna Baccari competes for the Union Olympique Albertville Tarentaise (UOAT) and is registered with the Fédération Française d’Athlétisme under licence 645243. She is registered with World Athletics under athlete code 14752462. She can be followed on Instagram at @jenna.baccari and on TikTok at @jenna.baccari. Her yoga studio can be found at @studio.yogajenna on Instagram.
