The United States regained in the 200m curve what Sha’Carri Richardson had lost in the 100m straight on Sunday, part of the sprint crown to Julien Alfred, the athlete from Saint Lucia who was crowned Olympic 100m champion. The heroine of the reconquest was the magnificent Gabrielle Thomas, 27 years old, who passed the first 100m in 11.10s, a tenth of a second ahead of Alfred, less accustomed to running sideways, who passed fourth. Although Alfred regained positions in the straight, Thomas, a lifelong specialist in the 200m, queen of sprint endurance, increased her advantage to win (21.83s compared to 22.08s for the 100m champion, who won her second medal).
Miltiadis Tentoglou sometimes jumps over benches and walls in parkour courses, but he is more on the relaxed side of life. He plays the piano and the bouzouki and paints. He is a two-time Olympic champion and can walk around Paris without being recognised. There are so few Greek tourists strolling along the banks of the Seine. So discreet is the best long jumper of the last decade who, with a jump of 8.48m, renewed the title won in Tokyo three years ago. Second was Jamaican Wayne Pinnock, 8.36m, and bronze went to Italian youth Mattia Furlani, 8.34m. Since 2018, the 26-year-old athlete from Thessaloniki has won all the major championships – outdoor world championships, indoor world championships, European championships indoors and abroad, Games – in which he has participated except for the 2022 World Championships in Oregon, where he was beaten by China’s Jianan Wang, eighth in the Paris final.
The maple leaf is at least as strong as the Iron Curtain in the Cold War, and the East no longer throws further than anyone else. As in Budapest at the World Championships a year ago, the women’s hammer is as Canadian as the men’s, and the protagonists are the same in the capital of the Danube, more of a river than the Seine, and in Paris. Two days after the 23-year-old phenomenon Ethan Katzberg, his compatriot Camryn Rogers repeated the feat with a throw of 76.97m, two and a half metres longer than the best of the second, the American Annette Echikunwore (75.48m).
Irene Sánchez Escribano, the Toledo native who has regained faith in herself in Paris, finished eleventh but smiling in the final of the 3,000m steeplechase, where she improved her personal best (9m 10.43s), ever closer to the national record of Marta Domínguez (9m 9.39s), in a race in which France regained faith in its athletics, thanks to the courage of Alice Finot. The local athletes are crying because they say that so many people in the stadium, so much expectation, so much encouragement, instead of pushing them, it weighs on their spirits and sinks them, but the Frenchwoman from Ponteareas denied their complaints with them. Pushed fantastically by the stadium, with only one voice for her, Finot, who trains in Vigo under the orders of Manu Ageitos, made a tremendous last thousand and, although she finished fourth (impossible to catch the first three, Winfred Yanvi, Kenyan with a Bahrain passport, 8m 52.76s, Olympic record, Peruth Chemutai, from Uganda, 8m 55.34s, and the Kenyan Faith Cherotich, 8m 55.15s), she did so with an extraordinary European record, 8m 58.67s,
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