[ad_1]
A leading Norwegian newspaper blared a headline Tuesday morning in Oslo: “Hunting Two Gold Tonight.” Norway stunningly settled for one silver. Jake Wightman, who had never won a global championship medal, stormed past Jakob Ingebrigtsen halfway through the final lap of the 1,500 meters. Minutes later, Karsten Warholm, who had not lost a 400-meter hurdles race that he had finished since 2018, barely finished.
American Rai Benjamin finally beat the rival who stopped him from winning gold in Tokyo, but he couldn’t claim the top of the podium. Brazilian Alison dos Santos, a bronze medalist footnote at that epic Olympic final last summer, dusted Benjamin and everybody else as he won in 46.29 seconds. Benjamin finished in 46.89. Trevor Bassitt, who runs without sponsorship, provided another surprise with a bronze medal finish in 47.39. When his time popped up on the scoreboard, Benjamin rushed from behind and tackled him to the track.
“Can somebody sign this man!?” Benjamin hollered on the track.
“I knew if I got a medal, people would be shocked,” Bassitt said.
Once the track cleared, Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh climbed the podium and accepted a silver medal. Her high jump honor paired with the bronze won Monday by Ukrainian men’s high jumper Andriy Protsenko. He moved from the besieged city of Kherson to a rural village, where he scrounged for training tools. He turned an iron bar and two tires into a barbell for squatting.
“After that, I understand that anything is possible,” Ukrainian hurdler Anna Ryzhykova said. “Andriy trained for one month in an occupied city. To go out there with the risk of his life and his family and win a bronze medal, it was so amazing. I was almost crying.”
World Athletics, track and field’s global governing body, became one of the first sports organizations to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes in February. President Sebastian Coe said it would be “inconceivable” to allow “two aggressor nations who walked into an independent state” to compete, a sentiment Ukrainian athletes agreed with.
“We won’t compete with murderers,” Ryzhykova said. “If they keep silent, they support their government. It’s impossible in the real world to compete with people like them.”
“Every sportsman from Russia has a chance to say something,” Ukrainian hurdler Viktoriya Tkachuk said. “No one said anything, even in a personal message. They are not supporting us. They are not supporting Ukraine. So it means they support [President Vladimir] Putin and everything that Russia is doing with Ukraine now.”
Benjamin and Warholm renewed a rivalry that took the event to unthinkable levels last summer. At the start of 2021, American Kevin Young’s world record had stood at 46.78 seconds for 29 years. Benjamin came within 0.05 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials, and days later Warholm seized the record at 46.70. In Tokyo, on a bouncy track, Warholm and Benjamin engaged in perhaps the greatest race in Olympic history. Benjamin took an early lead and obliterated Warholm’s record in 46.17. But Warholm separated in the final 50 meters and crossed in 45.94, tearing a hole in his singlet as he become the first man to break 46 seconds.
Before Tuesday night’s final, Benjamin had warned against expecting the same performance. Neither had been at his best this year — dos Santos, in fact, had run the fastest time of 2022.
Although Benjamin’s training had been hampered by tendinitis that required a platelet-rich plasma injection after the U.S. championships, Tuesday’s final was his best chance to conquer his inexorable rival. Warholm suffered a small hamstring tear during a race June 5, which truncated his preparation and as late as last week, he claimed, endangered his participation. (“I had no doubts,” Benjamin said.) Benjamin was also running in front of his home fans, in a stadium at which he had collected a pile of championships.
“I’m not into kicking people when they’re down,” Benjamin said afterward. “He’s hurt. I’m hurt.”
Warholm said he felt no pain in his ailing hamstring but pointed to a lack of training owing to injury sapped his fitness.
“I’ve been living on this cloud for the last three or four years, where everything is going my way,” he said. “With this injury, I have to do things a little bit differently. Someday, I hope I can be proud of coming here, given the circumstances.”
The night included the meet debut of another 400-meter hurdles dynamo who has transformed the event. Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin laid waste to her heat preliminary heat, finishing in 53.95 seconds with minimal effort. McLaughlin, 22, has broken the world record at every major event over the past year while lowering it from Dalilah Muhammad’s 52.16 to 51.41.
Muhammad pushed McLaughlin to those heights, challenging her at the Olympic trials and the Olympics. Their rivalry, though, may have reached its endpoint. Muhammad turned 32 this year and skipped the U.S. championships while recovering from a hamstring injury. She ran the third-fastest time of the preliminary round (54.45), but it would be a shock if he reclaims the event. Muhammad and McLaughlin once operated on the same plane, but McLaughlin may now be in a class of her own.
Before Tuesday night, Wightman’s biggest accomplishment in the 1,500 had been a bronze medal at the European championships. He reached his first Olympics last summer and finished 10th; Ingebrigtsen set an Olympic record at 21.
Ingebrigtsen took control of the race after two laps and held off the pack, seemingly cruising to another coronation. Wightman, running at the front of a pack behind Ingebrigtsen, bolted to the outside and sprinted even with him, then past him, around the final turn. Ingebrigtsen summoned his kick, but Wightman crept further into the lead. With 50 meters to go, Ingebrigtsen craned his neck and looked behind him. The best miler in the world realized he was running for second.
Afterward, Wightman found his mother in the stands and hugged her. An in-stadium interviewer informed him he was the world champion. “I know,” Wightman said. “Crazy.”
The reporter then turned to Wightman’s mother, who declared she was “the proudest mum in the whole stadium — in the world.” Shortly thereafter, Wightman ran a fifth lap around Hayward Field, this one with the Union Jack draped over his back.
Three days after he won the 100-meter final, Fred Kerley missed the 200-meter final after he felt a twinge in his left hamstring and finished sixth in his heat. He suffered only a cramp, per a Team USA spokeswoman, and could be considered for Saturday’s 4×100 relay. Noah Lyles won his heat in 19.62 seconds, a strikingly fast time for a semifinal. He perhaps learned a lesson from last summer’s Olympics, where he pulled up in a semifinal and barely qualified before winning bronze.
[ad_2]
Source link
