Letsile Tebogo is almost a god and Paris, the capital of Botswana, was on the verge, just a tenth of a second, a blink of an eye, of depriving the empire, the United States, of the gold in the 4x400m relay, its treasure, the greatest symbol of the power of its athletics. The marvellous Tebogo, winner of the 200m, takes over in the last leg with a deficit of two tenths of a second. Half a metre ahead, the American to be beaten, none other than Rai Benjamin, the phenomenon who the day before had beaten Karsten Warholm in the final of the 400m hurdles. The ecstatic stadium goes crazy. The light blues, the Africans can topple the most powerful country. Tebogo, fired up, pushes, pushes, pushes, and when he comes out of the last curve, Benjamin always ahead, it seems that yes, he will be able to, that his class, his fluid stride, so soft that it does not hurt, like the breeze, will defeat the tremendous power, the potency of Benjamin. It is a poetic fight, a dream, in which realism prevails. By a tenth.
The United States, pushed by the incredible Botswana of their hero Tebogo, breaks the Olympic record (2m 54.43s), Tebogo breaks a speed record: 43.03s in his 400m throw. And even though frustrated, the stadium erupts, and a few minutes later repeats the jubilation, although not as exalted, with the women’s long relay, not as exciting because of the clear victory of the North Americans (3m 15.27s), with a quartet in which her majesty Sydney McLaughlin gets her second gold after the 400m hurdles and Gabby Thomas, who always remembers those who suffer from endometriosis in her thanks, the third, after the 200m and the short relay, and the stadium acclaims its France, fifth, who breaks the national record (3m 21.41s), and its first relay, Sounkamba Sylla, who is prohibited by the State from running with a veil, does so with a cap that holds all her hair and a white short-sleeved T-shirt under her straps.
It is the end of the last night in the stadium, the evening of great emotions, in which the unloved Jakob Ingebrigtsen receives forgiveness and acclaim after his impressive victory in the 5,000m, Faith Kipyegon breaks the Olympic record for the 1,500m with an incredible 3m 51.29s in a race without mechanical, luminous or human hares.
And it all began at 19.15, when the sun was still burning, the lavender Mondo was burning and water was a precious commodity. It was the 800m of dreams, the test for gourmets. Moha Attaoui, magnificent, goes out to the race with his little bottle of water, and leaves it on his starting block, number six, marking his territory. The object that breaks the uniformity of the scene, in the same way that the phenomenal Cantabrian breaks the patterns of the test, explosive, resistant and very fast. When he returns after the official presentation, the bottle is still there. He takes a sip, rinses his mouth, wets his neck. Having completed his ritual, he runs like a little devil among giants. A mine between his legs. Behind the closet Marco Arop (the world champion), and everyone behind another big guy, the Kenyan Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the locomotive of the AVE that no one passes. 50.28s for the first 400m. And he doesn’t slow down. A self-important hare pushed by others, Wanyonyi covers the second 400m in 50.91s. Only David Rudisha, King David in London 2012, has run faster (1m 40.91s, world record) at the Games; only two have run faster in history. And among those chasing him in a dizzying race, as dizzying as his athletics career, is Moha Attaoui, Torrelavega, 22 years old, a promising talent a year ago, who used his savings and prize money to spend a few weeks at altitude, now a professional established among the crème de la crème of world middle distance running. “I don’t think about everything I’ve done this year,” says Attaoui, runner-up in Europe in Rome in June. “I take it day by day.” Less than a month ago, he broke the Spanish record with a time so unexpected that no one could find the adjectives to describe it: 1m 42.04s, the ninth in history. In the final in Paris, however, he came close to beating it, but his 1m 42.08s (50.8s + 52.0s), a time that would have made him Olympic champion at all the Games except London, only got him fifth. The final was so immense that a time of 1m 41.67, a US record, was not enough for Bryce Hoppel to get on the podium, which was occupied after Wanyonyi by the Canadian Arop (1m 41.20s) and Djamel Sedjati (1m 41.50s), the Algerian whose apartment in the Olympic Village was searched by the anti-doping police on Thursday, reports L’Équipe. Seventh place went to Botswana’s Tshepiso Masalela, who also went under 1m 43s.
The result of Sedjati’s record is not known, but Ingebrigtsen’s happiness is known. The fallen god of the 1,500m, who launched himself from far away at the 5,000m after Ethiopian Hagos Gebrhiwet, who attacked fiercely at 600m. Calmly, almost calmly, Ingebrigtsen (a tremendous 1m 49s in his last 800m) caught up with him and easily overtook him, and won the medal that redeems him by distance (13m 13.66s).
Oh, and France, at the last opportunity, finally got a medal in the stadium. It was a woman, of course, the talented hurdler Cyrena Samba-Mayela, the 60m hurdles champion at the World Championships in Glasgow, who took silver sandwiched between the American Masai Russell (12.33s) and the tremendous Tokyo champion, Puerto Rican Jasmine Camacho-Quinn.
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