Fiona May

Fiona May
Personal information
Nationality Italian
Born 12 December 1969
Slough, England
Height 1.81 m (5 ft 11 1⁄2 in)
Weight 60 kg (130 lb)
Sport
Country Italy
Sport Athletics
Event(s) Long jump
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s) 7.11 m (1998)

Fiona May Iapichino (born 12 December 1969 in Slough, England) is a retired British-born Italian athlete who competed in the long jump. She won the World Championships twice and two Olympic silver medals. Her personal best jump was 7.11 metres, which was her silver medal result at the 1998 European Championships.

Biography

She also competed briefly in triple jump, and her career best of 14.65 metres from 1998 was good enough to place fifth in the world that season.[1] May originally competed for Great Britain, but married Gianni Iapichino and became an Italian citizen in 1994. Iapichino, a former pole vaulter whose best achievements were a fifth and sixth place at the European Indoor Championships in 1992 and 1994,[2] was her coach as well. May gave birth to a daughter in 2002, and missed the whole season as a result. Her last significant competition to date was the 2005 World Championships, where she failed to reach the final.[3]

May attended Leeds Trinity & All Saints College,[4] a college affiliated the University of Leeds, studying economics, business management and administration. In 2006 she retired from competitions and started a new successful career in show business. After some modelling, she became the spokeswoman of the Kinder snacks and she won the Italian version of Dancing with the stars in 2006. Later that year her acting debut was broadcast on Rai Uno as the protagonist of Butta la luna, a miniseries about racism and social integration. [5]

Family

May's parents are Jamaican.[6] She is also rugby player Marcel Garvey's cousin.

Achievements

YearTournamentVenueResult
Representing  Great Britain and  England
1987 European Junior Championships Birmingham, United Kingdom 1st
1988 World Junior Championships Sudbury, Canada 1st
Olympic Games Seoul, South Korea 6th
1990 Commonwealth Games Auckland, New Zealand 3rd
European Championships Split, Yugoslavia 7th
Representing  Italy
1994 European Championships Helsinki, Finland 3rd
1995 World Championships Gothenburg, Sweden 1st
1996 Olympic Games Atlanta, United States 2nd
IAAF Grand Prix Final Milan, Italy 3rd
1997 World Indoor Championships Paris, France 1st
World Championships Athens, Greece 3rd
1998 European Indoor Championships Valencia, Spain 1st
European Championships Budapest, Hungary 2nd
1999 World Championships Sevilla, Spain 2nd
2000 Olympic Games Sydney 2nd
2001 World Indoor Championships Lisbon, Portugal 4th
World Championships Edmonton, Canada 1st
2003 World Championships Paris, France 9th
2004 World Indoor Championships Budapest, Hungary 6th
2005 Mediterranean Games Almería, Spain 1st

See also

References

  1. ↑ "TRIPLE JUMP 1998".
  2. ↑ "24th European Indoor Championships 1996, 24th European Indoor Championships 1998". european-athletics.org. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
  3. ↑ "Fiona May's makes Final Farewell". iaaf.org. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
  4. ↑ "University of Leeds". at1ce.org. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
  5. ↑ "Butta la luna 2, da stasera su Raiuno torna Fiona May in versione attric" (in Italian). tvblog.it. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
  6. ↑ "Sporting heroes".

External links

Sporting positions
Preceded by
Brazil Maurren Higa Maggi		 Women's Long Jump Best Year Performance
2000 		Succeeded by
Russia Tatyana Kotova