Mattia Furlani, the 20-year-old Italo-Senegalese jumper from Marino, near Rome, celebrated a career-defining win at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo today. He claimed gold in the men’s long jump with a personal best of 8.39 metres.
The performance made him both the youngest athlete and the first Italian to win the outdoor world long jump title. His decisive jump came on the fifth attempt, enough to beat Jamaica’s Tajay Gayle, who took silver with 8.34m, and China’s Shi Yuhao, who secured bronze with 8.33m. The evening also saw a major upset as Miltiadis Tentoglou, the reigning Olympic and world champion and world-leader in 2025 with 8.46m, failed to advance past the preliminaries after jumping only 7.83m.
In a joyfully tearful television interview with state broadcaster Rai, Furlani said he could hardly believe what had happened until he heard the Italian national anthem. He described the night as “something magical,” praising his team’s ability to adjust jump by jump and thanking his family, fiancée, and supporters across Italy for helping him achieve what he called an “incredible result.” He added that it had been a “magical year” but insisted this was “just the beginning.”
The Tokyo victory capped an already remarkable season for the young athlete. In March, Furlani claimed his first senior world title at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, where he won gold with an 8.30m leap. That narrow win placed him ahead of Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock and Australia’s Liam Adcock in a dramatic final, and it marked his arrival on the world stage as a serious contender. His progress this year built on the promise he had already shown, including a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in 2024 with a jump of 8.34m and a silver medal at the European Indoor Championships earlier in 2025, where he missed gold by just one centimetre.
