Italy has named a team of 26 athletes for the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Kujawy-Pomorze from 20-22 March, their biggest ever team for this championships.
The Italian team will have medal prospects across the programme but they will be particularly strong in the horizontal jumps.
Mattia Furlani and Andy Diaz Hernandez will defend their titles in the long jump and triple jump respectively while the latter is joined on the Italian team by Andrea Dallavalle, the surprise silver medallist from the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
European indoor champion Larissa Iapichino will be in contention for the women’s long jump title and emulating her mother Fiona May who won this title back in Paris in 1997.
On the track, Italy’s principal medal hopes will be European indoor champion Zaynab Dosso in the 60m and Nadia Battocletti in the 3000m.
Dosso is the joint world leader in the 60m with 6.99 while Battocletti just missed the European indoor record in Lievin last month with a 8:26.44 clocking, just 0.03 shy of Laura Muir’s nine-year-old record.
Fellow European champions Leonardo Fabbri and Lorenzo Simonelli have also been selected in the shot put and 60m hurdles respectively. Fabbri holds the world lead in the shot put with 22.50m and will be seeking his first global title indoors or outdoors.
European U20 100m and 4x100m champion Kelly Doualla makes her senior debut on the Italian team in the 60m. And at 16 years and 121 days, she will become the youngest athlete to represent Italy in the history of the World Athletics Indoor Championships.
The full Italian team can be found here.