Olympic Games Paris 2024

European Athletics Championships 2024 preview: 10 storylines not to be missed in Rome

By Jo Gunston
6 min|
Gianmarco Tamberi of Team Italy wins World high jump gold

Picture by Michael Steele/Getty Images

Muscle fibres honed, fast-twitch reactions snapping, endurance batteries charged, the 2024 European Athletics Championships will be full of human endeavour, enhanced in its drama with less than two months to go until the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

From debutants trying to make a breakthrough, to edge-of-Olympic-selection nervousness, to those making their final preparations for the XXXIII Olympiad, the European Championships taking place in Rome from 7-12 June, will showcase success, agony, and unexpected moments as athletes take to track & field events at the Stadio Olimpico.

Continental bragging rights are, of course, at stake, but there's more.

Some big-name athletes have yet to secure the Olympic qualifying mark for their sport and must do so in Italy to even have a chance of competing for Olympic honours.

Many athletes are yet to be officially selected by their National Olympic Committees for a hallowed place so must showcase their form on the last big stage before the Olympic Games in France.

So ahead of the six-day championships, in which nine World champions are set to compete, Olympics.com highlights just some of the not-to-be-missed storylines.

  • As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
  • Click here to see the official qualification system for each sport.

World champions competing at Roma 2024 include Femke Bol, Karsten Warholm and Gianmarco Tamberi

1. Looking to continue their sparkling form in the most important of periods are the nine individual world champions from 2023 listed below competing in Rome. They are:

Femke Bol (women's 400m hurdles)
Yaroslava Mahuchikh (women's high jump)
Katarina Johnson-Thompson (heptathlon)
Jakob Ingebrigtsen (men's 1500/5000m)
Karsten Warholm (men's 400m hurdles)
Gianmarco Tamberi (men's high jump)
Armand Duplantis (men's pole vault)
Miltiadis Tentoglou (men's long jump)
Daniel Ståhl (men's discus)

Heptathlon showdown, decathlon decider and sensational seven?

  1. A gladiatorial contest between World and Olympic heptathlon champions Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Nafi Thiam, respectively, will play out in Rome. Briton Johnson-Thompson, a two-time world champion, has yet to win a European title whereas Thiam is aiming for a threepeat.

    The Belgian double Olympic champion needs to secure the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying mark of 6480 points in her first competition of the season to book her quota place in France's capital.

  2. Niklas Kaul’s victory in the decathlon last time out in Munich in front of home fans was quite the comeback. In fourth place going into the second day, sensational performances in javelin and the 1500m, saw the German overtake long-time leader Simon Ehammer to take the win, in a crowd noise he described as "nearly blowing my ears off".

    Swiss Ehammer is back in Rome, as is Frenchman Kevin Mayer, a two-time Olympic silver medallist, who will be hoping for gold at his home Games, if he can secure the qualification mark in Rome first, that is.

  3. Sandra Elkasevic (nee Perkovic) will be aiming for an astonishing seventh consecutive women's discus title. Yet to suffer a defeat at the continental championships, the Croatian has won every edition of the discipline since Barcelona 2010. A third consecutive Olympic title is also on the cards for Paris 2024.

    In the men's discus, the host nation's Leonardo Fabbri is looking to become just the second European shot putter in history to break the 23m line after peppering the 22m mark this season.

Potential history-making discus throws, pole vault leaps, and hurdling Dutch masters

  1. A history-making moment is potentially on the cards in the men's discus, with the main protagonists looking to throw over the 70m line for the first time at a European Championships.

    When you've got the likes of reigning World and Olympic champion Daniel Ståhl, 2022 World's best Kristjan Čeh, and world record holder as of April, Mykolas Alekna of Lithuania, in the mix, the discus event could see sparks fly.

    Things to know about discus world record breaker Mykolas Alekna

  2. Mondo Duplantis will take to the skies again in Rome to have another go at the men's pole vault world record after just missing out on extending his own mark at his home Diamond League in Stockholm on Sunday (2 June). Those lucky enough to be in the crowd in Rome could see the Swedish Olympic champion scale 6.25m in a world's first.

  3. Dutch one-lap hurdling wonder, Femke Bol, started the season with a world indoor record of 49.17 seconds to win the 400m flat title at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March. The 2023 World champion then claimed the Stockholm Diamond League win in her first outdoor race of the season and will look to push on again in Italy.

  4. Femke Bol and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone: Who reigns supreme over the 400m and 400m hurdles?

Icon v newcomer in long jump, Norway's biggest team and home crowd favourite Gianmarco Tamberi

  1. Only 1cm separated icon Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece and Italian newcomer Mattia Furlani at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in March with the World and Olympic champion coming out on top. The roar of the home crowd might be enough to push teenager Furlani that extra centimetre to victory in Rome.

    Miltiadis Tentoglou edges out teenage "beast" Mattia Furlani in long jump thriller

  2. Norway's biggest ever team of 52 athletes will be led by Karsten Warholm and Jakob Ingebrigtsen who will hope to start taking charge in their respective 400m hurdles and 1500m/5000m disciplines, after wobbly starts to the all-important Olympic season.

  3. One of the loudest roars of the championships will no doubt be directed at the home nation's charismatic Gianmarco Tamberi who famously shared Olympic gold with good friend and rival Mutaz Barshim of Qatar in the men's high jump at Tokyo 2020. Ukraine's Yaroslava Mahuchikh will no doubt continue to fly high as she looks to improve on her Olympic bronze medal from Japan, starting with a good showing in Rome.

Let the gladiators enter the arena.

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