Greece’s long jump champion Miltiades Tentoglou required just one jump to confirm his status as a favorite for a gold medal in the Olympics.
On Sunday in Paris Tentoglou jumped 8.32 meters in his first attempt and passed the limit set at 8.15 meters to qualify for the men’s long jump final on Tuesday.
The Greek athlete aims to become the second athlete in the history of the modern Olympic Games to win gold in consecutive long jump competitions. Carl Lewis won the long jump at four consecutive Olympics (1984, 1988, 1992, 1996).
After his easy qualification, Tentoglou said that the wind did not help his effort. “If the wind favors me on August 6, I can also set a personal best,” he said.
In June the 26-year-old Greek athlete retained his men’s long jump title at the European Athletics Championships in Rome with an extraordinary sequence of five big eight-meter jumps.
He set a championship record, new personal best and world lead of 8.65 meters with his two final efforts.
Tentoglou has now won three consecutive golds in the European championship.
How Tentoglou became a legend in world athletics
In March this year, Miltiadis Tentoglou retained his long jump crown with 8.22 meters at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland.
Tentoglou won the gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the gold medal at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
In 2022, Tentoglou became the World Indoor champion, jumping the current Greek indoor record of 8.55 meters, which places him sixth on the respective world all-time list. He won a silver at the outdoor World Championships.
He is a six-time European champion, winning three consecutive outdoor titles in 2018, 2022, and 2024 and a record of three successive men’s indoor titles between 2019 and 2023.
Miltiadis Tentoglou was born in Thessaloniki on March 18, 1998. He grew up in the town of Grevena, where he spent his childhood and teenage years.
Until the age of 15, he had no experience in field and track whatsoever. However, in his teenage years, he was practiced parkour as a hobby.
He incidentally got involved with track and field at the age of 15 at the urging of the Greek track and field coach Vangelis Papanikos, who had observed him doing parkour in the stadium bleachers at the Grevena stadium. Papanikos was the first person to recognize Tentoglou’s exceptional natural talent and his great physical agility, and he actually was his first coach.
Then in 2017, Tentoglou teamed up with renowned Greek-Bulgarian coach, Georgi Pomashki, who is his current coach. Pomashki is the coach who led Tentoglou to the top.
