Mattia Furlani at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Christel Saneh for World Athletics)
Mattia Furlani made quite the leap in 2024. At the age of just 19, the Italian jumps talent became an Olympic medallist, a world indoor medallist, a European medallist and a world U20 record-holder.
All this in what was deemed a “transition year” as he made the move from the U20 to senior ranks. It led to him being named Men’s Rising Star at the World Athletics Awards 2024 in Monaco.
“I dreamed of this season. For me, it was a perfect year,” he reflected. “I am so happy with this season – from the indoors, to Rome, to the Olympic Games and the final in the Diamond League.”
Rising Stars Mattia Furlani and Sembo Almayew on stage at the World Athletics Awards 2024 (© World Athletics)
As Furlani explained when receiving his Rising Star award on stage at the Theatre Princesse Grace in Monaco in December, it was the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March that kicked it all off.
“Glasgow, it was my first senior medal on the global stage,” he said. “There were amazing emotions.”
At 19 years and 24 days, Furlani became the youngest athlete in history to win a world indoor medal in the horizontal jumps. His first-round leap of 8.22m matched the mark achieved by multiple global gold medallist Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece, with Tentoglou only beating his teenage rival on countback courtesy of a superior second-best jump.
“What a great day – I have been dreaming about this medal for weeks and I want to thank everybody who has worked with me," said Furlani. "This is the beginning of a long journey.”
Mattia Furlani at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow (© Dan Vernon)
His journey continued the following month, when he opened his outdoor season at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Suzhou before heading back home to compete in Savona in May. Leaping 8.36m, Furlani added one centimetre to the world U20 record of 8.35m that had been set by Russia’s Sergey Morgunov in 2012. In the lead up to the World Indoor Championships, Furlani had jumped 8.34m at the Italian Championships, missing that record by a single centimetre.
“Finally! I have been looking for this result for a long time and it means a lot,” Furlani told the Italian athletics federation at the time. “It means that we are working well and on the right path, on the threshold of two very important events such as the European Championships in Rome and the Paris Olympics.”
Furlani was to make the most of both of those opportunities, too. At the European Championships, competing in front of a home crowd once again, he improved the world U20 record to 8.38m to secure another silver medal behind Tentoglou.
Mattia Furlani at the World Athletics Awards (© World Athletics)
Furlani became an Olympic medallist two months later, leaping 8.34m to bag bronze behind Tentoglou and Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock in Paris.
“It’s a dream. I live the dream every day,” said Furlani afterwards. “With dedication, work and belief, I’m here with this medal.”
It earned him high praise from Tentoglou, too.
“I tell him all the time that he is crazy. What he does is unreal,” said the two-time Olympic champion. “As a young talent, I was jumping eight metres when I was 18 and 19 years old, but I was never able to be so consistent at that young age. It took me a long time to get to that stage.”
In total, Furlani surpassed eight metres in eight competitions in 2024. The double 2022 European U18 champion, who claimed gold in both the long jump and high jump in that competition in Jerusalem, has improved his long jump best from 8.04m in 2022 to 8.24m in 2023 and 8.38m in 2024.
Italian long jumper Mattia Furlani at the European U18 Championships in Jerusalem (© Getty Images)
He intends to build on this in 2025, with the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing in March and the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September his big targets.
“It was a transition year for him (in 2024), so I am really happy that he is getting to an elite level. We want to go further,” explained his mother Khadidiatou Seck, a former sprinter who is now Furlani’s main coach. She guides her son alongside his father Marcello, a 2.27m high jumper. “I am really happy for him, with how things have gone this year. I am expecting more in the future.”
Furlani agrees. “We are very excited because we are working very well,” he said. “The emotion and these vibes, I want to try to get the best out of myself.”
Furlani has great memories of watching the Olympic Games in Tokyo and hopes to be part of another successful Italian team when global athletics action returns to Japan’s capital in 2025.
“For Italy, it was a special Olympic Games because we got five gold medals,” Furlani reflected when asked about his memories of the Games. “The gold medal by Gianmarco (Tamberi, in the high jump), because that was when I did high jump and I was not a long jumper.
“I saw with my eyes, the emotion. He is one of my biggest inspirations. And the gold medal in the 100m from Marcell (Jacobs). That was a big inspiration, too, because before the 100m, Marcell was a long jumper.”
Considering his own progression, Furlani added: “Every year I beat my personal best and maybe this year (2024) people expected more evolution from me. Maybe this is one important point of this year: to try to evolve year after year.”
Jess Whittington for World Athletics
