COME WHAT MAY

FIONA MAY TELLS EMILY MOSS ABOUT LIFE AFTER ATHLETICS, WHICH INCLUDES STARRING AS THE MAIN CHARACTER IN AN ITALIAN TV DRAMA SERIES BUTTA LA LUNA, APPEARING ON DANCING WITH THE STARS AND BROADCASTING FOR SKY SPORTS ITALIA FROM THE LONDON OLYMPICS

MARK SHEARMAN & NFTI

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.

“Yes they did,” she says, speaking from her home in Mugello, just outside Florence, where she lives with her two daughters, Larissa, 14, and Anastasia, 7. “They still do.

If I go in any part of the world, even the Italians there all know me and consider me Italian. They know I was British and competed for Great Britain, but to them I’m Italian. I wish it was the same for Shara [Proctor] and the other athletes that have switched to represent GB. It’s the reality of life.”

The 46-year-old May takes up her life story. “After graduating from Leeds University, Trinity and All Saints College and after a pretty disastrous Olympic Games in Barcelona, I returned home and decided to go on holiday to Italy and sort out my head. I’m still on holiday!” she says, tongue firmly in cheek.