European Athletics Championships, new injury for Furlani: "My season ends here"

New injury for Mattia Furlani over the course of European Athletics Championships opened today in Birmingham. The 21-year-old world champion was forced to withdraw in the long jump qualifiers, leaving the track in pain after his first jump of 7.73. And as feared, the young Italian was the victim of a relapse afterwards the injury to the right hamstring remedied in May, a relapse that in fact ends its season early as Furlani himself announces on Instagram.

“It’s now been two and a half months since that injury in China. Two months in which the objective was first and foremost to recover as best as possible to try to return to the stage healthy, even before performing. Months in which a lot of work was done both on the pitch and with the medical staff. If I hadn’t had the extreme certainty — and the test of Monte Carlo was proof of this — I would never have entered the platform running the conscious risk of a probable relapse – writes Furlani – Today I felt good, I entered hard and evidently my body, at certain intensities, was not yet ready to return to the speed I was used to, suffering a relapse. In recent months I’ve probably had the worst moments so far: I’m experiencing a lack of confidence in myself and my means which lately have only been expanding, seeing the road a little blurry. My season ends here.”

Furlani’s injury in May

In May, on the occasion of the Diamond League stage in China, he reported hamstring injury right foot which had kept him away from competitions for several weeks. Furlani, the reigning long jump world champion, left the Alexander Stadium in the British city in a wheelchair. There is fear of an injury following the one that happened in Xiamen last May. Immediately after emerging from the sandpit, Mattia touched his right bicep.

Azzurri at the start with mourning on their shirt for Berruti

The Italian national team is competing with a sign of mourning on their shirt in memory of Livio Berruti, Olympic 200 meters champion in Rome ’60, who passed away on Sunday.

Tortu: “Thanks to Berruti I fell in love with the Games”

“Livio will remain my legend and thanks to him I fell in love with athletics and the Olympics. As a child I had seen his race at the 1960 Rome Olympics, his run had bewitched me. We met in 2016”. Filippo Tortu, the first Italian to have dipped under 10 seconds in the 100 meters (9″99 in 2018), tells AGI. On 3 September 1960, at the Olympic stadium in Rome, Berruti was the first non-North American to have won the 200 meters at the Olympics. “I had met him in 2016 on the occasion of an event in Turin – recalls Tortu, absent from the European Championships in Birmingham for the flare-up of an injury -. We saw each other a couple of times a year for lunch, we called each other, we wrote to each other, I have great memories of him. The last time I heard from him – he adds – was on May 19th for his birthday. After meeting him, Livio was much more than those 200 metres, albeit a historic 200 metres, he was a man of subtle humour, always cheerful, pleasant, in love with life. He – he concludes – always said that there was only one difference between the two of us, he had studied at the classical high school and I at the scientific high school”.