Fiona May: won world junior gold and finished sixth in the Seoul Olympics in 1988 for Great Britain before later switching to Italy
AFTER BEING the only British winner at the inaugural World Junior Championships in Canada in 1988, May made the Olympic team for the Seoul Olympics that summer, finishing sixth in the long jump final at the age of 18, and looked set for a bright future for GB. That bright future would see her leaping a PB of 7.11m when claiming silver at the 1998 European Championships – only it was to be in the colours of Italy after she married an Italian pole vaulter in 1994 and moved to Florence.
She won gold for her new country at the 1995 and 2001 World Championships, together with Olympic silvers in 1996 and 2000. In contrast to the controversy surrounding the import of “plastic Brits” today, the Italian public and media regarded May as not so much plastic, but fantastic.