Paris Olympics preview: long jump

Men's long jump

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• Miltiadis Tentoglou could become only the second man after Carl Lewis to retain the Olympic long jump title
• Olympic, world and world indoor champion Tentoglou has this year achieved the longest leap in the world since 2019
• Carey McLeod and Mattia Furlani in form to fight for medals

No man other than the nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis, who secured four long jump titles between 1984 and 1996, has secured back-to-back wins in this event at the Olympic Games. Miltiadis Tentoglou – the Olympic, world, world indoor and European champion – aims to change that in Paris.

Tentoglou was aged 18 when he made his Olympic debut in Rio, a few weeks after securing silver at the World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz. Five years later he became the Olympic champion, and the major medals haven’t stopped since.

In 2022, the Greek star won the world indoor title and secured silver behind China’s Wang Jianan at the World Championships in Oregon before claiming the second of his European titles in Munich. In 2023, he won the European indoor title and upgraded his world silver to gold in Budapest. So far in 2024 he has retained his world indoor and European titles, winning all bar one of the 11 competitions he has contested.

He has improved his PB to 8.65m – the farthest leap in the world since 2019 – and now heads to Paris hoping to replicate that fantastic form on the biggest stage.

That 8.65m came at the European Championships in Rome and Tentoglou achieved it twice, in the final two rounds of the competition. All five of his valid efforts were beyond 8.40m, a mark that two other athletes have managed so far this year.

Swiss decathlete Simon Ehammer – the world long jump bronze medallist in 2022 – jumped 8.41m in the qualifying round in Rome, just four centimetres off his own national record from 2022. That record was set as part of a decathlon and is a world decathlon best, but in Paris the world indoor heptathlon champion’s focus will be on the individual event.

Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock is the third athlete to have soared 8.40m this year and having jumped 8.50m in Budapest to finish just two centimetres down on Tentoglou’s winning mark, the 23-year-old will want to be up there, battling again.

Italy’s 19-year-old Mattia Furlani delighted the home crowds at the European Championships in Rome as he soared to a world U20 record of 8.38m to secure the silver. Like Tentoglou, Ehammer and Pinnock, Furlani already has major medal experience, too, as he got world indoor silver behind his Greek rival in Glasgow, jumping the exact same mark as the winner.

Jamaica’s Carey McLeod, who missed a world medal on countback last year as his two compatriots – Pinnock and 2019 world champion Tajay Gayle – secured places on the podium, did get his medal moment in Glasgow as he headed home with a bronze.

With at least one major medal apiece now, that Jamaican trio comes together again in Paris where they will also face 2022 world champion Wang, Sweden’s 2022 world indoor silver medallist Thobias Montler and USA’s 2017 world silver medallist Jarrion Lawson.

McLeod also heads to Paris with the knowledge that he is the only athlete to have beaten Tentoglou this year following his victory at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Doha. McLeod’s 8.52m – the longest jump of his career in any conditions – might have had an illegal 5.2m/s tailwind behind it, but it will still have been a confidence boost ahead of competing at his second Olympics in Paris. In Tokyo three years ago, the Jamaican contested both the long jump and the triple jump.

 

Women's long jump

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• Malaika Mihambo back on top after injury
• Tara Davis-Woodhall ready to challenge after world indoor title win
• Larissa Iapichino among the medal contenders

Competition in the women’s long jump looks set to be fierce at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Germany’s defending champion Malaika Mihambo is back near her very top form after injury and jumped a world-leading 7.22m to win the European title in June, while USA’s Tara Davis-Woodhall soared a PB of 7.18m indoors in February and went on to win the world indoor title.

Jasmine Moore – also entered for the triple jump in Paris – has threatened seven metres this season, jumping 6.98m to finish second to Davis-Woodhall at the US Olympic trials, while a host of athletes have surpassed 6.90m, including Bulgaria’s 19-year-old Plamena Mitkova, the world U20 champion who jumped 6.97m in June, and Italy’s Larissa Iapichino, who jumped 6.94m to clinch European silver on home soil in Rome.

When it comes to Diamond League competition, Mihambo and Iapichino have one victory apiece so far this year. Iapichino achieved hers on 7 July in Paris, where Mihambo had to settle for seventh, and Mihambo secured hers two weeks later in London, where Iapichino was third.

Mihambo jumped 7.30m to win the world title in Doha in 2019 and retained her crown in Oregon in 2022. A hamstring injury meant she missed the opportunity to go for a threepeat in Budapest last year, but she returned to action in January and capped her comeback with that 7.22m leap – the second best mark of her career – to win the European title in Rome.

“This meant so much for me to come back again after all those years of change, crisis, grief and sorrow,” the 30-year-old wrote on social media. “But I grew personally through all of that and now I’m mentally stronger – stronger as ever before.”

Another athlete who has proven her strength is Davis-Woodhall, the 25-year-old whose first senior global medal was the silver she gained behind Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic in Budapest last year. That followed the world U18 title she claimed in 2015 and the world U20 bronze she added to her CV three years later. She was sixth at the Tokyo Games and now returns to the Olympic stage as a world indoor champion.

Two-time world indoor champion Spanovic has only competed twice so far this year, but she has the benefit of almost two decades of international experience to lean on. She made her Olympic debut in 2008, earned Olympic bronze in 2016 and now heads to Paris for her fifth Games. She does so as a world champion, too, having claimed the first senior global outdoor gold medal of her career in Budapest last year ahead of Davis-Woodhall and Romania’s Alina Rotaru-Kottmann.

Portugal’s Agate de Sousa, who set a PB of 7.03m last year, jumped 6.91m for bronze at the European Championships. Other athletes to watch include Nigeria’s Olympic bronze medallist Ese Brume, Jamaica’s NCAA long jump and triple jump champion Ackelia Smith, Burkina Faso’s Marthe Koala, who won the Diamond League meeting in Suzhou, and Colombia’s Natalia Linares, who claimed world U20 silver behind Mitkova on home soil in Cali two years ago.

Jess Whittington for World Athletics