The hush before the Olympic 100m final has always been one of the most exhilarating in sport. Tens of thousands wait with bated breath for that explosion of pent-up expectation. This time the hush merged with all the others in a near-empty stadium, but silence was golden for Italy and it ended with a winner’s scream.
It was a scream all round. An Italian won the final. It is worth considering that sentence. Lamont Marcell Jacobs, an unheralded 26-year-old born in El Paso, Texas, to an Italian mother, clocked 9.8sec to take the gold. That was faster than the time Usain Bolt recorded to win gold in Rio de Janeiro four years ago. Better than Bolt?
For the record, Fred Kerley, a former 400m runner, was second in 9.84 for the United States. “I really didn’t know anything about him,” Kerley said when asked about the new man. For an Olympic 100m champion to fly down the track that fast after flying so far under the radar is unprecedented. Even athletics officials were heard debating whether he went by the name of Marcell or Lamont. Italian journalists plumped for Marcell. Suffice it to say, he has made a name for himself.
Andre De Grasse, the Canadian who had been third in Rio, was third again, in 9.89. That was the only thing that seems to have stayed the same, but this was all about Jacobs, who became the first European winner since Linford Christie in 1992. In one night the Italian broke the European record twice. Until this year he had never dipped below ten seconds. His rise to the summit of the event is more staggering given he has spent much of his career as a long jumper. His Instagram name is the “crazy long jumper” and he is trained by Paolo Camossi, the 2001 world indoor triple-jump champion.
The scream at the end? “I just let go,” Jacobs said. “It was a scream that expressed all the pain from the past. Now it was a scream of joy. As an athlete you can’t always win. I have lost a lot of times, but I have always returned trying to deliver better performances. And now I can say I have achieved the gold medal.”
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As you may be aware these are the first Olympic Games since Bolt retired. They are also the first without him since 2000. “Bask in my glory, I am a living legend,” he told a press conference in 2012. “It’s difficult to compare myself to him,” Jacobs said. “He is the face of the entire sport and it’s not the time to compare myself to him — we will have to see what happens.”
This was one of the biggest shocks in Olympic history. The sad part is that the event’s history, from Ben Johnson to Justin Gatlin to Christian Coleman, the present world champion banned for missed drug tests, means the arrival of any new star will alert the more skeptical. Like all top sprinters, Jacobs will face questions as his fame grows.
It is not his fault, but of the top 50 times in the world going into yesterday’s race, Bolt ran 14 of them. Take him out and 32 of the next 36 were run by men who have tested positive or served bans. The weight of history is the burden of any new champion.
Italy, though, is having quite the sporting summer. Euro 2020, a Wimbledon finalist and a 100m gold won five minutes after their celebrated high jumper, Gianmarco Tamberi, had shared a high jump gold with Mutaz Barshim, of Qatar. Tamberi is famed for having a beard on one side of his face while being clean shaven on the other. There were no half measures from him here, though, and none from Jacobs. As he crossed the line, the first arms he found to run into were those of Tamberi. The previous night they had spent using the PlayStation in Jacobs’s room.
So who is this newcomer? He has Italian and African-American heritage and moved to Desenzano del Garda when his father, a US soldier, left for South Korea 20 days after his mother gave birth. Now living in Rome with his partner and two children, he had a strained relationship with his father but made contact again last year after ignoring Facebook messages.
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“The relationship became stronger thanks to my mental coach,” he said. “I had never got to know my father and we had grown apart. We hadn’t talked for some time but that [getting back in touch] gave me the energy and the will to give everything here today.”
He dreamt of being a different sort of champion. “Up to three years ago my dream was to win an Olympic Games in the long jump but then I had a couple of accidents,” Jacobs said. “But you never give up on fulfilling your dreams.”
He made the semi-final of the 100m at the World Championships in 2019. He made the same stage at the European Championships in 2018. He was 11th in the long jump at the European Championships in 2016. This year’s European indoor title hinted at the improvement.
You might say this 100m veered between the sub-10 and the ridiculous. In the semi-finals two men pulled hamstrings. Britain’s Reece Prescod false-started and bowed out. Zharnel Hughes, his team-mate, won his semi-final in 9.98 and thought he was going to win Britain’s first 100m medal since Christie’s gold in 1992. Then he false-started in the final and was disqualified too. He blamed it on cramp. “It was so severe I couldn’t stay in my blocks,” he said. “On your marks, set, cramp. I’m heartbroken. I know for a fact I would have medalled.” Instead he emulated the 1996 Christie disqualification from his Olympic title defence.
In the same race, Su Bingtian set a China and Asian record of 9.83, while no Jamaican made the final.
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Elsewhere, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, of Puerto Rico, set an Olympic record of 12.26 in the women’s 100m hurdles. Best of all, Yulimar Rojas, of Venezuela, set the first world record of the Games with 15.67 metres in the triple jump. Already a national hero at home, she has moved to a different level. As for Jacobs, he has come from nowhere to be the biggest noise of all.
