European U20 champion Mattia Furlani came within one centimetre of the world U20 record in the long jump on the first day of the Italian Indoor Championships in Ancona on Saturday (17).
On another day replete with Italian records, Furlani began his series with an outright lifetime best of 8.31m before improving to 8.34m in the fourth round to equal the world lead and move to second on the world all-time U20 list behind Russia’s Sergey Morgunov who leapt 8.35m in 2012.
“Yes, these distances are fun. We need to bring them to the right place at the right time, working on this path. We're on track; I can compete with anyone,” said Furlani, whose first major target this year is the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow from 1-3 March, as quoted by FIDAL.
Furlani’s first and fourth round efforts were the two longest jumps in history indoors by an U20 athlete and the 2023 European Athletics men's Rising Star further justified that accolade by eclipsing Andrew Howe’s long-standing Italian indoor record of 8.30m.
Furlani, who only turned 19 less than two weeks ago, also recorded valid jumps of 8.24m and 8.03m in the second and third round before passing his fifth attempt and fouling his sixth jump.
Lorenzo Simonelli improved his Italian 60m hurdles record by two-hundredths to 7.48 to win the domestic title and Elisa Molinarolo cleared 4.66m in the pole vault for an Italian indoor record, reclaiming the record from Roberta Bruni who cleared 4.65m on Wednesday.
Other highlights included European indoor silver medallist Larissa Iapichino winning the women’s long jump with a season’s best of 6.80m, Valentina Trapletti winning the 3000m race walk with a world leading 12:17.89 and Francesco Fortunato also winning the 5000m race walk in a world lead and lifetime best of 18:25.15.
Steven Mills for European Athletics
