If you didn’t catch the Paralympics track meet on Monday night, you missed your chance to see the four fastest runners in the world in the men’s 1,500 meters.
That’s right, four Paralympians — competing in the classification for athletes with visual impairments — ran faster times than the gold-medal winner at the Rio Olympics in August.
With his time of 3 minutes, 48.29 seconds, Algeria’s Abdellatif Baka would have claimed gold over the United States’ Matthew Centrowitz, who became the first American to win a title in the men’s 1,500 meters since 1908 by finishing the race in 3:50.00.
Silver medalist Tamiru Demisse of Ethiopia (3:48.59), bronze medalist Henry Kirwa of Kenya (3:49.59) and fourth-place finisher Fouad Baka of Algeria (3:49.59) also topped Centrowitz’s time from a month ago in a highly strategic Olympic final.
The runners were competing in the T13 class, for athletes with the least severe visual impairments (there are also T11 and T12 categories). In T13, the equivalent of the blind sports B3 classification, competitors have “no more than 10 percent functional vision” or “visual acuity from 2/60 to 6/60,” according to different definitions.
The stage might have been smaller — though it was held on the same Rio track as the Olympics — but the moment was just as bright for Baka and his competitors. Their disabilities did not prevent them from achieving the unimaginable.
“It wasn’t easy to get this gold medal,” Baka told the Huffington Post after the race. “I’ve been working one or two years nonstop, and it’s been very, very hard for me.”