Athletics: Giant leap for the sisterhood

Natasha May won her first title as a long jumper last weekend. She jumped 5.78m to win the North of England indoor championship at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield. In doing so, she secured ownership of a second long-jump title for the May family. Last August in Edmonton, Natasha's big sister, Fiona, won the world championship crown.

She did so in the blue vest of the Italian track and field azzurri. It is only since she left Britain, eight years ago, that Fiona May has become established at the pinnacle of world long jumping. As a naturalised Italian – a resident of Florence and wife of Gianni Iapichino, Italy's pole vault record holder – the one-time pride of Derby Ladies' Athletics Club has won two world titles and two Olympic silver medals. She has also twice relegated Marion Jones, the supposed superwoman of the athletics world, to the step below her on a major championship medal podium.

Now, at 32, having regained the world crown she first won in 1995, the leading lady of Italian sport is taking a year out from competition. Her first child is due in June. In the meantime, her 21-year-old sister is treading the boards on the indoor circuit in Britain, looking to launch an international long-jumping career of her own.

It takes a lot of guts to set out in the footsteps of your sister when she happens to have made it to the very top, and to the 7.11m mark as a long jumper. Natasha May deserves credit for that alone. She also deserves credit for the name she has made for herself in such a short time in the event. It was only a year ago that she took part in her first long-jump training session, yet she was placed fourth in the British Under-23 Championships last summer and finished 2001 ranked 22nd in the country, with a best jump of 5.90m. Now, after success in Sheffield last weekend, she has her first long-jump title. And on Saturday in Cardiff she tackles her first competition at national senior level, on the opening day of the Norwich Union AAA Indoor Championships at the Welsh National Indoor Athletics Centre.

"For now, I'm just seeing how things go," the younger May sister said last week, ensconsed temporarily at the élite training centre at Bath University before the start of her new term as a business and management student at Sheffield Hallam University. "I have to try to follow in Fiona's footsteps, so to speak, but I'm going to try to be my own person. I don't want to be compared, but I know I will be. It's inevitable."

It was that inevitability which turned Natasha away from the long jump in her youth. Her sister had blazed a glorious trail as a teenage prodigy before her at Derby Moor Community School, setting the first of a string of British age-group records as a 13-year-old. Natasha did briefly dally with the long jump but gave up after qualifying to represent Derbyshire in the event at the English Schools' Championships in 1994.

"I was 14 at the time," she said, "and I didn't really want to do it. I was being compared with my sister all the time. I didn't really enjoy it, so I started doing netball instead. That was really good. I played for Derbyshire and I went to a few England trials. I didn't actually get in to an England team but I was pretty close."

Natasha has always been close to her sister, despite the 11-year age gap between them. They have no other siblings. It was Fiona, in fact, who persuaded Natasha to give long jumping a serious shot. "Yeah, she was the one who said I should try to do it," Natasha reflected. "She said I should give it a go last year and just see how it went. I went over to Italy before the start of the season and did a bit of training with her.

"She's all for it. She's been helping me a lot. I speak to her regularly about how it's going." It has been going encouragingly well, with the help of the coaching the budding May has been receiving from Brad McStravick, the former Olympic decathlete who runs the UK Athletics High Performance Centre in Sheffield. Next Saturday's competition, however, will place the Sale Harrier's progress into a national perspective. Thirteen of the other 16 entrants have superior personal bests. Heading the list just happens to be Chioma Ajunwa, the London-based Nigerian athlete who emerged from a four-year drugs ban to snatch the Olympic gold title from May's sister in Atlanta six years ago.

The main reason Fiona has cited for not making the pregnant pause in her long- jumping career a permanent one is her burning desire for Olympic gold. She intends to be in Athens two years hence for what would be her fifth Olympic appearance. She made the first two for Britain – in Seoul in 1988 and in Barcelona in 1992 – and her little sister is hoping to wear the red, white and blue vest for the first time this summer, at under-23 level.

Longer term, Natasha May's ultimate ambition is to face her big sister in senior international competition. "Ooh, I'd love to do that," she said, picturing a day when the family long-jump title would be on the line.