Tamberi continued his strong start to the season, which saw him take victory on home soil in Ancona last weekend with a world leading jump of 2.32 metres.

On this occasion, Tamberi jumped faultlessly up to 2.31m, before twice failing at 2.33m and once at 2.35m, although by this point he had already done enough to win the competition.

Defending champion Zayas needed three attempts to get over both 2.28m and 2.31m, enough to give him second place.

Third place went to Ukraine’s Andriy Protsenko with a best of 2.28m.

Protsenko finished higher on countback than German Mateusz Przybylko who also cleared 2.28m but was only able to finish the fourth.

Although the Banskobystrická latka is a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver level meeting, for the men’s discipline only the contest counting towards scoring in the Gold series.

This is because some of the Indoor Tour Gold level meetings, the first of which took place in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Friday (January 29), are unable to accommodate a men’s high jump competition because of coronavirus restrictions.

A women’s high jump competition also took place in Banská Bystrica tonight and was a World Indoor Tour silver event.

Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh claimed victory with 2.06m, the highest indoor jump in the world for nine years.

Mahuchikh recorded only one failure on her way to a comfortable win with her compatriot Yuliya Levchenko in second on 1.96m.

Third place went to Karyna Demidik of Belarus on 1.93m, who triumphed on countback ahead of fourth placed Elena Vallortigara of Italy, who also finished on 1.93m.

The next scheduled World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting is the Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais, which is due to be held at the Arena Stade Couvert in Liévin, France on February 9.