Reigning European champion Leonardo Fabbri delivered a first round knockout blow in the shot put at the Eugene Diamond League on Saturday (4) afternoon.
Fabbri launched the shot put out to a world lead of 22.74m on his first attempt - just 24 centimetres shy of his national record - for a dominant victory over a strong field.
Olympic bronze medallist Rajindra Campbell from Jamaica also broke the 22 metre-barrier in the first round with 22.16m with Jordan Geist from the United States finishing second with 21.98m.
"I'm very happy because of my first round. I've been struggling the whole season with my first round. I felt like I always have to build a competition and I was feeling very, very bad in the first round. I'm very happy to go 22.74m, but I'm still struggling when I need to push on my throws. When I'm relaxed, like now in the first round or in the last one, I can go very big," said Fabbri.
Fabbri will be targeting back-to-back European titles in Birmingham from 10-16 August and the reigning champion extends his ascendency on the 2026 European list to almost 1.5 metres ahead of Sweden's Wictor Petersson who is second on the list with 21.38m.
Historic Italian long jump record for Iapichino
One day after Francesco Pernici broke the 53-year-old Italian 800m record, another historic and significant Italian record fell in Eugene.
European indoor champion Larissa Iapichino bounded out to an opening round mark of 7.12m in the long jump. The significance of this performance was that she eclipsed the record of 7.11m set by her mother Fiona May at the 1998 European Athletics Championships in Budapest.
Iapichino was pushed down into second by reigning world and Olympic champion Tara Davis-Woodhall who jumped 7.13m - also in the first round - before concluding her competition with a wind-assisted 7.12m.
Lithuania’s Mykolas Alekna’s comeback from surgery on his pectoral muscle only four months ago continued to gather pace on the road to the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham.
Having already broken the 70 metre-barrier with 70.60m on his season’s debut last month, Alekna extended his season’s best to 71.06m to defeat reigning European champion Kristjan Ceh from Slovenia with 69.94m.
Three-time world champion Daniel Ståhl from Sweden was sixth with 65.46m.
Photo courtesy of Logan Hannigan-Downs / Diamond League AG