European U20 long jump champion Larissa Iapichino and European indoor 60m champion Marcell Lamont Jacobs are both due to compete on home soil at the Meeting International Citta Di Savona on 13 May.
The Meeting International Citta Di Savona is the first scheduled European Athletics Outdoor Area Permit Meeting of the summer. The full schedule of meetings (as at 22 April) can be found here.
Iapichino made the headlines at this meeting last July when she bounded out to her outdoor lifetime best of 6.80m just one day prior to her 18th birthday. The precocious Italian has since improved further, eclipsing Heike Drechsler’s world indoor U20 record with 6.91m at her national indoor championships to also equal the national indoor record held by her mother Fiona May.
After a brief but successful indoor season which was capped off by a fifth-place finish in Torun 2021, Savona will represent Iapichino’s first competition of the outdoor season in which she will aim to defend her European U20 title in Tallinn before making her anticipated Olympic debut in Tokyo later in the season.
Her teammate Marcell Lamont Jacobs was one of the breakthrough performers in Torun where he stormed to the European indoor 60m title in a national indoor record and world leading time of 6.47.
Jacobs will contest his first 100m of the season in Savona but he is expected to make his outdoor season’s debut two weeks earlier at the World Athletics Relays in Silesia, Poland on 1-2 May. He is currently the third fastest Italian in history with a 10.03 PB behind Filippo Tortu (9.99) and the legendary Pietro Mennea (10.01).
The organisers have also announced that Italian 100m record-holder Filippo Tortu will also compete, setting up an exciting domestic head-to-head to begin the Italian outdoor season in earnest.
Former European 400m hurdles champion Yasmani Copello from Türkiye is also due to compete while leading Italian sprinter hurdlers Luminosa Bogliolo and Elisa Di Lazzaro are due to face Hungary’s Luca Kozak in the 100m hurdles.