Mattia Furlani brightened the opening morning of the Europeans 2024 athletics, already finding the right relationship with the brand new at the start raised platform of the Olympic Stadium in Rome. The young champion from Lazio, among the predestined of the tricolor movement, is qualified to the long jump final by force clocking in on the first attempt. To rightfully access the final act it was necessary to sign a leap of at least 8.00 meters and the blue went well beyond the always symbolic barrier of the specialty: 8.17 meters with even 1.0 m/s of headwind.
The breeze in his face did not scare our standard bearer, silver medalist at the last Indoor World Championships and holder of the under 20 world record with 8.36 meters completed on 15 May in Savona: he did not push by his own admission and saved himself a lot, jumping easily and without overdoing it: the important thing is to keep the energy for the final act, where he will hunt for a luxury result also to send a clear message when there are less than two months left until the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Mattia Furlani, in his eleventh career race over eight metres, has finished the qualifying round in third placemanaging to overtake the Greek Miltiadis Tentoglou: 8.14 meters with 1.3 m/s of headwind for the Olympic and World Champion, who had beaten the 19-year-old for the second best measurement during the recent indoor world championship. It was him who broke the bank Swiss Simon Ehammer with a surreal flight of 8.41 metres with as much as 0.6 m/s of headwind. The Swiss signed the best seasonal world performance, surpassing the 8.36 of Furlani and Tentoglou (on May 10th in Doha) for what concerns the outdoor tests and also the 8.40 of the Jamaican Wayne Pinnock indoors. According to the British Jacob Fincham-Dukes with 8.18 meters (1.1 m/s headwind.
This being the case, it promises to be one stellar challenge in the final which will be staged tomorrow night, with Furlani and Tentoglou appearing as favorites (will Ehammer still be able to jump that far?). Five other men have exceeded the qualification norm and will try to have their say in the fight for medals: the Portuguese Gerson Baldé (8.10), the German Luka Herden (8.08), the Bulgarian Bozhidar Saraboyukov (8.04, Furlani’s great rival at the European Championships juniors), the German Simon Batz (8.03) and the Czech Petr Meindlschmid (8.01 with 2.8 m/s of breeze in his face).
Filippo Randazzo is the first of those excluded from the final act with a 7.94 meters (+0.2 m/s) found on the last jump: thirteenth place with a measurement that usually qualifies for a place in the final even at the World Championships, the entry into the top twelve was missed by just one centimeter. The other Italian Kareem Mersal was eliminated, stopped at 7.55 meters. The list of finalists is completed by the Frenchman Tom Campagne (7.98), the Spanish Eusebio Caceres (7.98) and the Serbian Strahinja Jovancevic (7.95).
