Singapore's Kampton Kam smashes 30-year high jump national record

SINGAPORE: High jumper Kampton Kam wrote his name into the history books on Friday (Apr 11), shattering a 30-year national record.

Kam, who is currently studying at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, registered a new all-time mark of 2.25m at the 2025 South Florida Invitational to top the field.

This eclipses the previous national record of 2.22m, set by Wong Yew Tong at the 1995 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Kam currently holds Singapore's high jump records across multiple age groups, as well as the indoor national record of 2.21m, which he set last month on the way to winning the high jump title at the Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships.

The 24-year-old now has his sights set on the year-end SEA Games in Bangkok, where he hopes to end a long medal drought. No Singaporean male athlete has reached the podium in the event since Wong Yew Tong’s silver in 1995.

Kam made his SEA Games debut in 2019, but missed out on the 2022 edition due to surgery on a collapsed lung. He did not participate in the 2023 Games because of academic commitments.