Greek long-jumper Miltos Tentoglou added one more gold medal to his long collection after winning gold in the Rome 2024 European Athletics Championships on Saturday evening.
Tentoglou won his third straight European outdoor title with a world lead and championship record of 8.65m (-0.3m/s), coming up just 1cm shy of Louis Tsatoumas’ national record.
The 26-year-old jumper extended his unbeaten streak in major competitions since 2019 and won the gold medal at the European Championship for the third consecutive time, making it the 13th gold in his incredible career.
Tentoglou dashed the hopes of the home crowd and rising star Mattia Furlani at a rocking Stadio Olimpico on Saturday night. Tentoglou took an early lead in the long jump with a world-leading 8.42m, then the Italian teenager responded by breaking his own world U20 record with 8.38m (-0.5m/s).
But Tentoglou struck back with 8.49m in the third round, then unleashed his 8.65m effort in the fifth round, which he repeated in the final round (remarkably with the exact same wind reading of -0.3m/s) when the gold was assured. Simon Ehammer of Switzerland took bronze with 8.31m.
Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis took social platform X (formerly Twitter) to congratulate the athlete for his posting: “The incredible Miltos Tentoglou is once again the European Champion! With an amazing performance, he won the gold medal at the European Championship in Rome and made us proud once again!
Warm congratulations 🇬🇷”
