Another gold medal. Gianmarco Tamberi triumphs in Rome in the European Athletics Championships and confirms himself as continental high jump champion. ‘Gimbo’ triumphs with 2.37, best world performance of the year and championship record. The athlete from the Marche region, a month and a half away from the Paris 2024 Olympics where he will be the standard-bearer, is in excellent condition ahead of the five-circle competition, where – needless to say – he will defend the gold won in Tokyo 2020.
Tamberi, 32 years old, is one of the symbols of Italian sport, capable of completing an extraordinary trio in recent seasons: Olympic champion, then world and European champion (3 times in total, after the exploit in Rome).
In Japan, in the Games postponed to 2021 due to the Covid emergency, the Marche native shared the top step of the podium with his Qatari friend Mutaz Essa Barshim. In 2022 continental gold in Germany. In August 2023 he won the gold medal in the high jump at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, confirming himself as the king of the platform. Scepter firmly preserved also in Rma.
Tamberi, born on 1 June 1992 in Civitanova Marche, has been at the top for almost a decade now. In 2015 the Italian record was 2.34, immediately raised to 2.37. Indoors, he flies at 2.38. In 2016 he won the World Indoor Championships in Portland and triumphed at the European Championships in Amsterdam. In Monte Carlo he touches the Italian record: 2.39, but the exploit costs a lot. An ankle injury forced him to miss the 2016 Rio Olympics, in the best moment of his career. The disappointment is enormous, the recovery is long and complicated.
2017 was a slow run-in before the progress recorded in 2018. The following year brought the return of the real Tamberi: he jumped 2.32 at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow and took gold. The rest is recent history. In Tokyo he does nothing wrong: he jumps 2.37 without errors, a clear path that is worth the gold medal ex aequo. In 2022, with a jump to 2.30, another gold comes at the European Championships in Munich. The triumph arrives in Budapest: world champion, first title with a wedding ring on his finger. Since September 2022, Tamberi has been married to Chiara Bontempi, his historic girlfriend.
