Miltiadis Tentoglou in the long jump at the 2018 World Indoor Championships (© AFP / Getty Images)
One glance at the medal record of Greek long jumper Miltiadis Tentoglou is enough to tell you that here is a championship performer.
The 23-year-old from Grevena, a world U18 silver medallist in 2016, went on to win European indoor titles either side of his 2018 European outdoor victory, and at last summer’s Tokyo Olympics he earned the ultimate gold in the most dramatic of circumstances.
With Cuba’s own 23-year-old long jump sensation, Juan Miguel Echevarria, poised to take the title thanks to an effort of 8.41m, Tentoglou matched it with his sixth and final effort – and won gold through a second-best jump of 8.11m that exceeded his rival’s by just two centimetres.
So the Greek, currently ranked world No.1 and joint second on this season’s world lists on 8.25m, has to be the favourite for gold at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade 22.
It will be no formality, however. While the Swiss decathlete and current European U23 champion Simon Ehammer, who tops this year’s world list with 8.26m, is absent, there will be a strong challenge in the form of Sweden’s Thobias Montler and the United States pair of Marquis Dendy and Jarrion Lawson.
Montler, 26, who has won two successive European indoor silvers and finished seventh in the Olympic final, is always highly competitive.
Dendy, 29, won the world indoor title on the home ground of Portland, Oregon, in 2016 and took bronze at the last edition in Birmingham four years ago.
His season’s best of 8.14m ranks him fifth in the Belgrade field, but his legal personal best of 8.42m, and his 2015 effort of 8.68m – the best effort in five years, albeit with an illegal wind reading of +3.7m/s – offer clear evidence of his ability to produce a winning jump.
The same is true of Lawson, who has a best of 8.19m so far this year and whose outdoor best of 8.58m is only two centimetres shy of Tentoglou’s.
Others to watch include Peru’s Jose Mandros Martinez, seventh in this year’s world list on 8.17m, set in winning the South American indoor title in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 20 February, plus Japan’s Yuki Hashioka, who has an outdoor best of 8.36m, and Uruguay’s Emiliano Lasa, who has jumped 8.11m outdoors this year.
Dendy’s winning effort of 8.26m at the 2016 World Indoor Championships was almost matched in the next round by the 8.25m area record that earned Australia’s Fabrice Lapierre silver.
This is an event that seems to produce drama every time around. what will Belgrade bring?
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics
