European U20 champion Mattia Furlani provided one of the highlights at the Folksam Stockholm Indoor Grand Prix, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Bronze meeting, on Saturday (3) afternoon.
The 18-year-old Italian beat a solid international field to win the men’s long jump in 8.08m in the Swedish capital to move to third on the Italian all-time list, just ahead of Olympic and European 100m champion Marcell Jacobs (8.07m) with only Andrew Howe (8.30m) and Giovanni Evangelisti (8.26m) ahead of him.
"What a bomb! I had a lot of fun, it was an excellent competition for the consistency of the jumps and for the awareness I achieved,” said Furlani as quoted by FIDAL.
“I just picked up the phone and it exploded with messages, I'll have to answer them all! I feel like I've grown mentally compared to previous years.
"We've set this first part of the season with the goal of Glasgow, carefully managing our commitments, without doing too many competitions but thinking about getting to the World Athletics Indoor Championships in top shape," said Furlani.
Great Britain’s Georgia Bell continued her impressive start to the year, winning the women’s 1500m in 4:03.22, a further improvement on her breakthrough lifetime best of 4:03.54 in Dortmund two weeks earlier.