It is two-and-a-half years since Italy’s charismatic high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi stood on the rostrum at a major international championship.
Having won the IAAF world indoor title in Portland, Oregon earlier in 2016, Tamberi added European gold to his collection in Amsterdam. And when he raised the national record to 2.39m at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Monaco five days later, everything appeared set for him to make his mark at the imminent Rio 2016 Olympics.
Tamberi did get to Rio de Janeiro – but with his left leg encased in plaster having badly injured his ankle in attempting the next height up in Monaco. Once the mournful spectator had done his duty in supporting his Italian teammates he began the slow and painful process of returning to top level competition.
By the following summer the crowd-pleasing performer whose trademark is to sport a beard for qualifying and to compete in the final with the right side of his face shaved clean - known as the half-shave - was back on the major stage. He made it to the IAAF World Championships in London but just missed out on a place in the final despite clearing 2.29m in qualifying.
The European Championships in Berlin was similarly tantalising as Tamberi just missed out on a medal but he produced glimpses of his very best form post-Berlin, clearing a sizeable season’s best of 2.33m in Eberstadt - by far his best clearance since 2016.
Now 26, Tamberi has another full winter of training behind him and as the high jump field gathers in Glasgow, he stands top of this year’s European lists with his 2.32m clearance from the Italian Indoor Championships in Ancona on 16 February. He also came very close to clearing 2.34m.
But the exuberant Italian will need to be at the top of his form to regain the podium. Belarus’ Maksim Nedasekau, who knocked Tamberi from medal contention in Berlin after clearing 2.31m on his only remaining attempt after two fouls at 2.28m, is only two centimetres behind Tamberi on the 2019 European list with 2.30m in Minsk on 22 December.
Other rivals will include reigning champion Sylwester Bednarek from Poland and Ukraine’s 30-year-old Andrii Protsenko, who has an outright lifetime best of 2.40m and has jumped 2.30m this season.
But Tamberi’s strongest challenger looks likely to be the German who took world indoor bronze last year before securing a home European gold in Berlin - Mateusz Przybylko.
The high jump will not be the only field event in Glasgow where emotions will run high. At 36, Britain’s triple jumper Nathan Douglas is making his first appearance at these championships since taking a silver in Birmingham in 2007.
“If I qualify there’s no one in that competition I can’t beat,” said the man whose career has been undermined by injury for so many years on the eve of the SPAR British Indoor Championships earlier this month.
Douglas, however, will not be the only veteran triple jumper competing in expectation of success. Italy’s Fabrizio Donato, six years his senior, first competed at the European Indoor Championships in 2000.
He won gold on home soil in Turin in 2009, took silver in Paris two years later and – after securing European outdoor gold in 2012 – returned to his favoured hunting in Belgrade where he won silver with a world over-40 record of 17.13m.
Nelson Evora is also reaching veteran status but the 34-year-old will be chasing his third successive European indoor title in the event. Nobody has surpassed the 17m-line in Europe this season but Evora has a knack of producing his best performances in the big events.
Expect another emotion-charged occasion in the women’s long jump, in which Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic, who ruptured her Achilles tendon in qualifying for last summer’s final in Berlin, will seek to complete a hat-trick of European indoor wins.
Spanovic, who took home gold in Belgrade two years ago with an extraordinary 7.24m, returned to the Serbian capital on February 20 and recorded a season’s best of 6.92m. Awaiting her in Glasgow is the German jumper who won home gold in Berlin: Malaika Mihambo.
Greece’s Olympic, world and European pole vault champion Ekaterini Stefanidi is also defending her title in Glasgow but will need to overcome the challenge from former champions Holly Bradshaw from Great Britain and Anzhelika Sidorova who have cleared 4.81m and 4.91m respectively in 2019.
Stefanidi, who has been troubled with illness recently, has only managed 4.74m so far this season but she is a big-time competitor par excellence.
As is another world and European champion Mariya Lasitskene who leads this year’s world high jump list with 2.04m. The Authorised Neutral Athlete will expect to extend her dominance over a field that includes Ukraine’s Yuliya Levchenko, who is third on the world list on 2.00m, and reigning champion Airine Palsyte from Lithuania.
There will be dark storms of emotion from the 26-year-old Russian if she doesn’t secure a second European indoor title, four years after winning the title in Prague.
And, who knows - given her dissatisfaction at the manner of her European outdoor win in Berlin last summer - even if she does?