Natalia Besi

Happy birthday to Greece’s Natalia Besi, the reigning Greek long jump champion indoors and out.

Natalia’s 2026 has already produced two of the best results of her career. In February at Paiania she jumped 6.41m for an indoor personal best, and she saved it for her final attempt. A week later she took bronze at the Balkan Indoor Championships in Belgrade with 6.28m, which she put down on her first jump of the competition. On 1 March she went back to Paiania and won the Greek Indoor Championships with the best mark of the day.

All of it follows the season that changed her career. Across 2025 Natalia jumped 6.62m at Alexandreia in June, a personal best by a distance, then went to Volos in August and won the Greek national long jump title for the first time with 6.48m. She had been a national bronze medallist as far back as 2021. The Greek federation’s own headline that day put it plainly: a winner for the first time. She had told a Greek broadcaster two months earlier that she felt this was going to be her year, and then she went and made it one.

She was born in Ioannina and grew up in Igoumenitsa, the port town in Thesprotia, and she still competes for her hometown club, GS Proteas Igoumenitsas, a decade after moving to Thessaloniki at eighteen to read physical education and sport science at Aristotle University. Every time she jumps well, the municipality of Igoumenitsa puts out a public congratulation. That is a small Greek town’s way of saying she belongs to them.

Χρόνια πολλά, Ναταλία! Και να τα εκατοστίσεις, με υγεία, χαρά και ακόμα πιο μακριά άλματα. Όπα! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇬🇷