World and Olympic long jump champion Miltiadis Tentoglou has threatened to quit long jump if World Athletics change the format of the discipline.
Olympic champion Miltiadis "Miltos" Tentoglou has threatened to leave long jump if World Athletics decides to change the format of the sport.
The Greek long jumper expressed his frustrations, explaining that World Athletics does not even consult them before making such critical decisions.
He added that making changes to the format of the event would remove the critical part of the sport and make it easier for anyone to win.
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“Long jump right now, is a very difficult event because you need to have accuracy and to be able to run like a sprinter and see the board perfectly but the jump itself is very easy.
“They want to remove the difficult part, the part that makes long jump a critical sport. If they remove it, then long jump will become an easy sport. If that happens, I will stop doing long jump.
“It’s so bad…It’s funny. Thank God triple jump exists because that’s the sport I’ll join after these things happen,” Tentoglou said.
He added that changing the event at the moment is not the best decision to make at the moment. Tentoglou lamented that World Athletics does not even listen to their opinions and they don’t respect them.
“I think changing the event is not the right way to go. They never asked us anything…our opinion. They are used to changing a lot of stuff without consulting us.
“I’m the Olympic and World champion and my opinion doesn’t even matter, so I don’t care. If I have to go and explain it, I mean, it’s obvious, they don’t even respect us so I would like more respect,” he added.
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Meanwhile, World Athletics announced plans to change the long jump format after statistics from the Budapest World Championships showed that a third of attempts ended in no-jumps as competitors try to push the limits of the board.
In a previous interview, World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon disclosed that the new format would see all jumps legalised so long as they took off from a new “jump zone”. Ridgeon believes that the move would see greater distances achieved and also see to it that the sport would be open to accusations of reducing the skill level required as athletes would no longer need to perfect the timing of their run-ups.