If I find a weakness I will turn it into a strength
Michael Jordan
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Well, this 17-day dream is coming to an end and my bosses are asking me for a summary of what we have experienced and it is hard for me to condense it all, honestly, it is too much.
I have a coffee and sit down to think, and while I think I watch the women’s marathon.
Six African athletes and one Japanese climb the fearsome Chaville hill, 600 metres high at 13%, and behind them squirms a lightweight Dutchwoman who has been competing for days at the Stade de France and does not want to lose her edge.
His name is Sifan Hassan and he has won bronze in the 5,000m, bronze in the 10,000m.
And his story solves my dilemma: I interpret Sifan Hassan (31) as the perfect summary, an end-of-course gift.
(…)
Michael Johnson likes to play with an advantage: he won two Olympic gold medals in Atlanta ’96 (200 and 400 m), and that’s why he often says:
-If you want to transcend, it’s not enough to just have gold. You have to get to where no one else has gotten to.
Michael Johnson’s Phrase
Michael Johnson often says: “If you want to transcend, it is not enough to have just one gold medal: do what no one else has done”
I suppose that Michael Johnson is thinking of himself, for example, because he himself has made an impact in the history of the Olympics. But I would like to believe that he is also thinking of Emil Zatopek. And Zatopek really made an impact: in Helsinki 1952, Zatopek won the 5,000m, the 10,000m and the marathon.
In June, the NN Running Team offered us an online chat with Sifan Hassan.
These meetings are common, because the company knows what it is doing and is committed to doing what it must do: it must bring its athletes to the stage, share their stories with us, launch them into the popular imagination. Sometimes, we meet with Eliud Kipchoge, the best marathon runner in history, now an autumn athlete.
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(Kipchoge, the only mortal to have broken the two-hour barrier in the marathon, often cites Roger Bannister, the first mortal to break the four-minute barrier in the mile.)
The longing
In June, Hassan told us that he wanted to win the 1,500, 5,000, 10,000 and marathon more than Zatopek.
Now, the NN Running Team brings us together with Sifan Hassan.
And at the meeting, Hassan confesses his intentions to us.
He tells us:
–In Paris I will compete in the 1,500, the 5,000, the 10,000 and the marathon.
Silence in the (digital) room.
Well, no one in the history of Olympic athletics had ever considered the idea of going that far.
Nobody.
Not even Zatopek.
And that is transcending.
The past
As a child, Hassan left Ethiopia for a better life in the Netherlands, just as the Cuban triple jumpers did.
Well, the challenge was so ambitious that Hassan was going to have to scale it back slightly. A couple of weeks later he ruled out the 1,500.
And here we have Hassan, and here I begin this game of parallels. Sifan Hassan wants to master a range of athletic disciplines, he wants to be like Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the proud Norwegian who always aims for gold in the 1,500-5,000, and who in Paris finished fourth in the first event, before redeeming himself and taking gold in the second.
Hassan has a similar experience, perhaps not as traumatic. He wins bronze in the 5,000m, and then bronze in the 10,000m. Two shots hit the post, and he only redeems himself this Sunday: gold in the marathon.
I look back at the end of that marathon and see Sifan Hassan writhing on the Chaville spike, just as Simone Biles writhes in pain on gymnastics qualifying day.
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For weeks now, Biles (27) has been giving her left ankle warnings. Lately, the problems have been fading away, but they appear after the floor routine, hitting the Olympic star again. Biles limps while warming up for the next routine, the vault, and in the stands we ask ourselves questions (“is she or isn’t she ready to compete?”) and she herself relives scenes from Tokyo 2020, that twisted (the disconnection between body and mind) that she had suffered then after her vault routine, and that had almost cost her the race.
The pain
On the hills of Chaville, Hassan struggles to stay on his feet, like Biles after her ankle pains
Biles overcomes that critical moment (the troubles of Tokyo then, the pains of Paris now), and finally re-emerges to project herself up to three golds and a silver, but not badly.
In the marathon, Hassan recovers from the knockout and rejoins the leading group, torturing her rivals, cannibalising them one by one: if someone shows signs of weakness, Hassan overcomes them, just like Teddy Riner, a local icon, knocking out all the judokas on her way to her fourth gold in the +100kg category: four fights, four victories by ippon, which is the equivalent of a KO in boxing.
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Hassan is an Ethiopian immigrant who emigrated to the Netherlands as a child in search of a better life – while she was making her way in athletics, her mother was scrubbing floors – just as three Cuban-born jumpers filled the triple jump podium representing the Mediterranean, one of whom was the Spaniard Jordan Díaz, gold medallist, another case of immigration resolved with glory.
The risk
Watching him go inside and pass Assefa in a sprint, Hassan emulates Djokovic, the god
who risks everything
Watching her search for the inside to overtake Tigist Assefa (world record holder in the marathon) and emerge in the lead at the finish line, risking everything, including her physicality, Hassan emulates Novak Djokovic, the Serbian tennis player who in June underwent emergency knee surgery with the idea of appearing at these Games and getting to where no one has gotten to, not even Nadal, not even Federer: he has already won four Grand Slams, the Masters Cup, the Davis Cup, the Olympic individual gold…
Hassan achieves glory and is like Léon Marchand, the French swimmer whose name hovers over Paris (four golds), as if it were a colossal monument that one can contemplate from the Eiffel Tower.
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