Miltiadis Tentoglou added yet another major title to his collection in the long jump at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on Tuesday (6) evening with an unsurpassable mark of 8.48m.
Still only 26, this was Tentoglou's eleventh major European or global medal of his remarkable career which began in earnest at the Berlin 2018 European Athletics Championships where he won his first of three European outdoor titles.
And Tentoglou now has two Olympic titles for posterity as he became the first jumper since Carl Lewis in Atlanta 1996 to successfully defend his long jump title.
Italy’s Mattia Furlani, who won silver behind Tentoglou at the World Athletics Indoor Championships and European Athletics Championships earlier this season, set the standard in the first round, taking the lead with 8.34m into a 1.0 m/s headwind.
But his lead only lasted the course of a round as Tentoglou underlined his reputation for being a supreme championship performer, displacing the 19-year-old Italian with a second attempt of 8.48m. This proved to be the gold medal-winning jump.
Nobody could surpass Tentoglou but Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock pipped Furlani - who also jumped 8.34m in the fifth round - for silver by two centimetres with 8.36 in the second round.
Hocker beats Kerr and Ingebrigtsen in a 1500m epic
In the most anticipated men’s 1500m final in arguably a generation, Josh Kerr outpaced his arch-rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen but they were both pipped on the inside by the outsider Cole Hocker from the United States who won in an Olympic record of 3:27.65.
Ingebrigtsen set a blistering pace from the gun to try and neutralise Kerr’s superior sprint finish, towing the field through 400m in close to world record pace in 54.82 and 800m in 1:51.83 - a pace Jakob admitted was too fast in his post-race interviews - with the two Kenyans Brian Komen and Timothy Cheruiyot running on his shoulder and Kerr in their slipstream.
Passing through the bell with the field strung out in single file, Kerr started to make his presence felt with 300 metres remaining, causing Ingebrigtsen to take several anxious glances over his right shoulder down the back straight at the Brit whose expression was impervious behind his trademark dark glasses.
But the American duo of Hocker and Yared Nuguse took full advantage of Ingebrigtsen’s pacemaking par excellence, running almost in sync and looming on the long-time leader’s shoulder as four athletes rounded the bend for the last time.
And in a frantic and fantastic rush for the medals, a tiring Ingebrigtsen drifted off the bend, allowing Hocker to strike on the inside. Kerr chased his American rival but this endeavour was in vain as Hocker pulled off one of the shocks of the Olympic Games. And in another unforeseen twist, Ingebrigtsen faded out of the medals altogether as Nuguse overhauled the reigning champion for bronze and only missing silver by 0.01.
And to add further insult to injury, Hocker also erased Ingebrigtsen’s Olympic record with his winning time of 3:27.65. Kerr’s silver medal-winning time of 3:27.79 was a British record while Nuguse won bronze in a lifetime best of 3:27.90.
Despite running faster than his previous Olympic record with 3:28.23, Ingebrigtsen came away empty-handed but he will have a second chance in the 5000m, an event in which he is the reigning world and European champion. The heats for the 5000m take place tomorrow morning.
European records for Laros and Finot
In the deepest championship 1500m race in history, the top six finishers all broke the 3:30-barrier, including the Dutch wonder-kid Niels Laros.
The 19-year-old double European U20 champion, who fell in two successive races prior to the Olympics, finished an excellent sixth in 3:29.54 to break his Dutch record and also take ownership of the European U20 record which had previously belonged to Ingebrigtsen, eclipsing his previous record of 3:30.16.
And in the 3000m steeplechase final, Alice Finot broke the nine minute-barrier for the first time in her career and eclipsed the long-standing European record in the process, finishing a brilliant fourth in a race won by Winfed Yavi from Bahrain, also in an Olympic record of 8:52.76.
Finot made considerable progress on the last lap and while she couldn’t quite close down on the three medallists, the European champion was delighted to set a European record of 8:58.67 which broke the previous mark of 8:58.81 - a world and Olympic record at the time - set by Gulnara Samitova-Galkina at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Steven Mills for European Athletics