The subversive Miltos Tedoglou sweeps everything in his path
He started from Grevena, where he grew up, to do parkour, causing headaches for his mother who was afraid of getting hit. At the age of 15, he started athletics at the urging of athletics coach Vangelis Papanikos, who had observed him doing parkour at the Greveni stadium. He was the first to recognize the talent and agility of Miltos and was his first coach. Later, Tentoglou started his collaboration with the meter jumping coach Giorgos Pomaski and took off.
The incredible Tedoglou is rightly regarded as one of the greatest long jumpers of all time, as at the age of 26 he has already won a total of eleven gold medals at all five major world and European athletics events. He emerged as a two-time Olympic gold medalist, at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and now at the Paris 2024 Games, a gold world champion at the Budapest Worlds in 2023 and a silver at the Eugene Oregon Worlds in 2022.
He was world champion at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade in 2022 and in Glasgow in 2024, European outdoor champion in 2018 in Berlin, 2022 in Munich and 2024 in Rome, world indoor champion in 2019 in Glasgow and European indoor champion athletics in 2021 and 2023.
With the Olympic gold medal in Paris, Tedoglou became only the second long jumper after the legendary Carl Lewis to retain his title in the event in a second consecutive Olympic Games. Lewis, of course, had won four consecutive Games (1984 Los Angeles, 1988 Seoul, 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta).
Unpredictable
A subversive and unpredictable character, Miltos has shown since the beginning of his career that he does not and will not fit into molds. He doesn’t wear suits, he doesn’t like much, he doesn’t make the familiar formal statements that everyone else makes, and he loathes protocol. It is certainly an enemy of paper collars everywhere. The way he will talk in the cafeteria with his friends, this is how he talks and behaves outside the games. That’s why people think he’s the coolest athlete around, that’s why he’s become everyone’s favorite. In this last one, of course, he has a serious opponent, his close friend Emmanuel Karalis.
On 8 February 2023, at an indoor track and field meet in Torun, Poland, Tedoglou achieved a world best with a jump of 8.40 m, but a few days later the World Athletics Federation announced the cancellation of the performance because they considered that he had jumped too shoes outside of her specifications, even though she had not carried out a relevant check in the first place. The reaction of the Greek Olympic champion? On the same day of the announcement, 15 February, he took part in the indoor track and field meeting in Leuven, where he achieved in different shoes (IAAF specifications) the best performance in the world up to that time, jumping 8.41m, at the fourth attempt!
His post-fight honesty is proverbial and disarming. He will tell you that he didn’t deserve to win today or that his opponent just won, he didn’t deserve to take first place. How many athletes can say that? Tedoglou!
He appreciated it
However, the gold medal in Paris was appreciated more than ever. “Very beautiful medal, I like it. Nice award, I appreciated it. I have heard the national anthem so many times in so many parts of the world, every time it is different. At the Olympics it’s even more important and impressive,” he said after the award and added: “I liked it more today because there were people in the stands this time, in Tokyo there was nobody. My mother and sister were there too. It’s special.”
At the same time, he also revealed something else: “I saw all my jumps, I’m happy. They were all big jumps, technically they were nice. There were some things I could change about my time. I’ve had an issue the last few days, I don’t know if I should say, with shoes. I had to wear a new pair of shoes and I didn’t have time to get used to them and I wasn’t as confident as I usually am in this part.” It should be noted that Miltos has an individual record in the open track of 8.65 m, just one point behind the Panhellenic record of Chatuma, he has 8.55 m in the indoor track, while he also has a performance of 15.61 m in the triple jump, which he is thinking of doing in the future. He can do it. Tedoglou is the one, you never know what and how it will dawn…
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