All roads lead to Rome and with the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships taking place in 100 days’ time from 7-12 June, the championships are looming large on the horizon.
The Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships - only the third time Italy has staged the championships since 1934 - will be the biggest and most prestigious outdoor athletics event ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games as well as the biggest sporting event to take place in Italy in 2024.
Tickets are on sale now and can be bought for as little as five euros for the morning sessions. Individual session and multi-day session tickets remain available to purchase. All tickets can be purchased here.
The championships will take place in the iconic Stadio Olimpico, the venue for the 1974 European Athletics Championships where home favourite Pietro Mennea famously won the 200m title in front of 60,000 spectators and the 1987 World Athletics Championships which was highlighted by Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova setting the still-standing world high jump record of 2.09m.
The stadium also hosted the 1960 Olympic Games which means this will be the fourth successive edition of the European Athletics Championships to be held in an Olympic Stadium after Amsterdam 2016, Berlin 2018 and Munich 2022 respectively, giving the championships an extra sense of occasion.
And from an Italian standpoint, the timing of the championships could hardly be better. All four individual Olympic champions from Tokyo 2020 - Marcell Jacobs, Gianmarco Tamberi, Antonella Palmisano and Massimo Stano - have all confirmed their participation and their gold medal-winning 4x100m team will challenge for their first ever European sprint relay title in Rome.
With Tamberi as captain, Italy also won the European Athletics Team Championships for the first time in event history last June in Silesia and their athletes have crested this irresistible wave ever since.
At the time of writing, an incredible 21 Italian records have already been broken or equalled in the first two months of the year alone. The many highlights have included Mattia Furlani jumping 8.34m in the long jump to come within one centimetre of the world U20 record and Lorenzo Simonelli and Zaynab Dosso breaking the Italian record three times in the men’s 60m hurdles and women’s 60m respectively.
Italian athletics riding a high with Rome approaching
Another of the breakthrough stars of the last twelve months has been Leonardo Fabbri who won silver in the shot put at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest. He has taken this rich vein of form into the 2024 season, throwing a mighty 22.37m in Lievin - the second longest throw indoors by a European in history.
Having won silver at the World Athletics Championships, Fabbri is relishing the opportunity of competing in front of a capacity crowd in the Stadio Olimpico in June when he will hopefully produce another performance which will be rewarded with a place on the podium.
“It will be wonderful to experience the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships with the Olympic Stadium sold-out. I can’t wait to start the competition
“It will be a beautiful chance and I don’t know when it will happen again so we have to enjoy it and have fun. The Olympic Games are very important but the European Athletics Championships at home has to be done well,” said Fabbri.
The men’s shot put final will be one of the hottest tickets in town with the possibility of not one - but two Italian medals in the event. A head-to-head with his training partner and good friend Zane Weir, the reigning European indoor champion, will be one of the most anticipated events of the championships.
“We have a beautiful relationship. We are friends in everyday life. We stimulate each other and try to take something from each other every day. In Rome we can compete for the title or a double. It will be beautiful. I hope this relationship will lead us to one day be the Messi and Ronaldo of the shot put,” said Fabbri.
‘My Fire’ documentary series launches
To mark the 100 days to go milestone, European Athletics has launched a hype video featuring many of the recognisable athletes across Europe as Roman statues as well as a new documentary series - My Fire - which will offer exclusive, never-seen-before footage with athletes who will feature in Roma 2024.
The first episode features the 2023 European Athletics men’s Rising Star Mattia Furlani and centres on his path to a dramatic gold medal in the long jump with a championship record of 8.23m at the European Athletics U20 Championships in Jerusalem last August.
The second episode to launch next month will feature European Athletics women’s Rising Star Angelina Topic from Serbia and follows her journey at the European Athletics U20 Championships and her bid to win a historic high jump-long jump double.
European Athletics will also be launching a podcast series in March which will feature insights from star athletes from across the continent who will challenge for gold medals in Roma 2024 and will also feature heavily in other aspects of the promotion of the championships.