Almost 700 days have passed since Italian sprinter Marcell Jacobs won the gold medal in the 100m dash at the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Since then, the reigning Olympic champion has run little and has had several physical problems. His only victories came in 2022, with not exactly exciting times, at the World Indoor Championships (60 meters) and at the European Championships. In the last year he has run the 100 meters only once and on several other occasions he withdrew his participation a few days before the races, always for minor physical annoyances.
Given all these problems and the results obtained in recent years, the questions are being asked from many quarters, and with ever more insistence, if Jacobs will be able to return to aspire to important victories: first of all at the Athletics World Championships in August in Budapest, Hungary, but above all at the Paris Olympics next year.
Two years ago in Tokyo Jacobs won by surprise. He got there after winning four Italian Championships over 100 meters and after becoming the second Italian, after Filippo Tortu, to dive under 10 seconds. In short, it was plausible that Jacobs would arrive on the podium, but unlikely that he could win. Then in Tokyo he set a new Italian record in the heats (9.94 seconds), a new European record in the semifinals (9.84) and an even better time in the final: 9.80, the same with which five years earlier the Jamaican Usain Bolt had won his last career gold.
(Spencer/Getty Images)
After the two Olympic gold medals, in 2021 he did not compete again. She returned to the track in early 2022 for the indoor season, secondary and preparatory to the outdoor one. In July, at the US World Championships in Eugene, the most important event of the year, Jacobs qualified for the semifinals with the tenth fastest time (10.04) but then withdrew due to an adductor contracture in his right thigh. Before that she had instead had a problem with her left bicep. You partly saved the post-Olympic season thanks to the gold you won at the European Championships in August, over 100 metres, won in 9 seconds and 95 cents: if you hadn’t won the Olympics a year earlier, it would have been talked about as a great achievement .
This year Jacobs finished second at both the Italian Championships and the European indoor championships, in both cases behind 23-year-old Samuele Ceccarelli, who has not yet dipped under 10 seconds over the 100 metres. Otherwise, outdoors and in the 100m, Jacobs only ran once.
After the Olympics Jacobs ran the 100m eight times and only twice did it take under 10 seconds. In the same period, the American Fred Kerley, silver in Tokyo and world champion in Eugene, ran them 18 times, often under 10 seconds: he also dropped several times under 9 seconds and 80 cents and set the second fastest time of the year; Jacobs, in his only race, had the 155th time of the season.
(Francois Nel/Getty Images)
Kerley and Jacobs, peers and often presented as “the fastest men in the world” for their Olympic and world victories, have only met a couple of times but have nonetheless been the protagonists of a series of small reciprocal provocations, often compared to those exchanging two boxers before a fight. Kerley said Jacobs’ indoor performances mattered little because “the real dogs come and play outdoors» (an English idiom that speaks of “real dogs that stay outdoors”). Jacobs responded by pointing out that a lion doesn’t mind barking dogs; he also reminded him that “when he really mattered”, i.e. in the final in Tokyo, he was the one who won.
This year, Jacobs’ outdoor season was supposed to start in late May in Rabat, Morocco, but that debut fell through due to what it was presented as “a slight lumbosacral block”, therefore not an injury, but only “the result of a false support”. The debut was therefore moved to early June at the Pietro Mennea Golden Gala (which this year took place in Florence instead of Rome), where there should have been a confrontation with Kerley. But even in this case it is skipped due to the absence of Jacobs. “The recovery process from the problem that emerged in recent days, according to reports, has not yet been fully completed”, he wrote the Italian Athletics Federation.
In his seasonal debut in Paris Jacobs had done well in the first thirty meters, then stiffened and slowed down, until he was described as “the stunt double of himself”.
After a disappointing seventh and penultimate place, and a time of 10 seconds and 21 cents, Jacobs he said: «I didn’t mind the first part, but in the end the legs became concrete instead of wood». Jacobs, who didn’t do that before this since 2020. However, he also said that he was able to “run without discomfort”, which he had not been able to do for some time, and that his result was a consequence of the “lack of work in the previous three weeks”. In the post-race interview, however, he said he was happy to finally be back racing.
After Paris Jacobs should have gone to the European team championships scheduled in Chorzów, Poland, from 20 to 25 June. In motivating this other renunciation the Federation spoke, in a press release dated June 13, of a “condition of perineural inflammation with vascular stasis of the emergence of the sciatic at the level of the ischial foramen of the right thigh, a situation most likely determined by a muscular traction of the piriformis”. In simpler terms, it appears that in addition to thigh issues, Jacobs also has sciatic nerve and buttock issues.
If he recovers, in July there will be some events in which he will be able to participate in view of a possible participation in the World Championships in Budapest, in which, in order to be competitive, however, he will have to lower his best season time by at least three tenths.
However, the main objective remains the Paris Olympics. As things stand now in terms of times and performances, a victory for Jacobs in Paris is more difficult than the one in Tokyo seemed a few weeks earlier. Many are discussing his conditions: for someone now the result in Tokyo was an exception, for others his talent was mismanaged (by himself, by his staff or by the athletics federation). Big Jacobs doubts there he expressed also Michael Johnson, sprinter who won four Olympic gold medals: «He’s obviously fast, but will he be able to stay well enough to put together a convincing series of races? For now, nothing seems to indicate it,” he wrote on Twitter.
However, we must consider the fact that athletics, and in particular the 100 meters, are elite activities in which it is enough to change a few details (shoes, running dynamics or certain positions, perhaps as a result of minor annoyances or injuries) to significantly affect performance and results. And that, as is often only noticed when the athletes themselves remember it, the psychological part is also decisive.
Meanwhile Wednesday Jacobs has shared a long post on Instagram in which he wrote: «I want to remind you that I am a human being and I push my body to give 110 percent continuously, and I sweat, toil and spit blood every single day of my life to achieve really challenging goals. I have many fears, but I am aware of all those, many, that I have faced and overcome. And I will be reborn again, overcoming the obstacles that life is putting in front of me again”.
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