This is it for Mutaz Essa Barshim. Most likely.

One of the greatest high jumpers in history is 33 years old going into the Paris Olympics this week, which means he’ll be 37 years old at the opening of the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Unless you’re LeBron James or Tom Brady, 37 is too old to be producing elite-level performances on sports’ biggest stages. In the sport of track and field, 37 is even more ancient; when Carl Lewis improbably won a gold medal in the long jump at the 1996 Olympics, he was 35 — and everyone talked about him like the living legend was a conquering grandpa.

So, barring a highly unlikely turn of events, the 2024 Olympics will be it for Barshim. Maybe not his last Olympics, but the last realistic shot for the Muslim athlete from Qatar to earn the one thing he has yet to earn in his illustrious career: a solo Olympic gold medal, where he stands alone atop the winners’ podium.

Barshim’s resume is loaded: Three gold medals at the outdoor world championships, plus a silver and a bronze; one gold and one silver at the indoor world championships; three golds at the Asian Games; a gold and a bronze at the outdoor Asian championships; five golds at the indoor Asian championships; one gold apiece at the Military World Games and Arab Games; and three golds at the Arab championships. His personal best clearances outdoors (7 feet, 11.5 inches) and indoors (7 feet, 10.75 inches) are both continental Asian records. His best outdoor mark is tied for third-best all time in the world, plus he has the fifth- and ninth-best outdoor jumps; and his indoor best is the third-best indoor jump in history.

At the Olympics, Barshim has compete three times, earning silver in 2012, silver in 2016, and, finally, gold in 2021 at the Tokyo games. While that medal made history as the first-ever Olympic gold for Qatar in track and field — and the second in any sport, after weightlifter Fares El-Bakh also won in Tokyo — it also came with an asterisk: Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi agreed to share gold when each of them were tied atop the leaderboard at 7 feet, 9.33 inches.

Should Barshim win a second gold in Paris — either solo or shared — he’ll pass retired Javier Sotomayor of Cuba, the world record holder and widely regarded as the high jump GOAT, with two Olympic gold medals. Barshim would then have a strong(er) GOAT argument of his own.

In a recently released documentary called Soaring, Barshim put it simply: “This Olympics, to me, is all about legacy.”