A famous Greek long jumper is to auction his shoes with the proceeds going to help child victims of last week’s twin earthquakes in southern Turkey, local media reported on Thursday.
The shoes, worn by Olympic gold medallist Miltiadis Tentoglou during his last appearance at the World Athletics Indoor Tour in France on Wednesday, will be auctioned off at the suggestion of his coach Giorgos Pomaski, public broadcaster ERT said.
Tentoglou, born in 1998, won a gold medal at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo with a jump of 8.41 metres.
He also won four consecutive European titles in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
At least 38,044 people were killed by two powerful earthquakes that struck southern Turkey on 6 February, the country’s disaster agency said early Friday.
The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes were centred in Kahramanmaras and affected 10 other provinces – Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Hatay, Gaziantep, Malatya, Kilis, Osmaniye, Elazig and Sanliurfa. More than 13 million people have been affected by the devastating earthquakes.
Several countries in the region, including Syria and Lebanon, also felt the powerful tremors that struck Turkey in less than 10 hours.
