PARIS. Álvaro Martín, the reigning world champion from Extremadura, was unable to achieve the gold medal he was craving in Paris 2024, but at least he managed to get the bronze medal, which allows him to remove the Olympic thorn that was stuck in his side in Tokyo 2020 with fourth place.
The athlete from Llerena, who had two frustrating performances in London 2012 and Rio 2016 and who left the Japanese capital in pain with a fourth place that was not enough for him, was able to bring out everything he had inside to achieve the Olympic medal that he was missing in his career.
On the final lap, however, he was unable to withstand the tremendous change of pace of the new champion, the Ecuadorian Brian Daniel Pintado, and even gave way to the Brazilian Caio Bonfim, but he gritted his teeth and crossed the finish line in third position despite the harassment of the winner in Tokyo, the Italian Massimo Stano.
Álvaro Martín obviously started out as one of the big favourites. He played his part. Always in the lead, he was attentive, although mainly to Stano. He seemed to be the ‘wheel’ to follow. He was not wrong, because the champion held out alongside all the contenders until almost the end.
The selection process was gradually made. Álvaro Martín stayed ahead, while Diego Carrera dropped back early and Paul McGrath resisted more, but eventually gave in to the changes of pace of an anarchic Bonfim that ended up leaving only Pintado, the Brazilian himself, the Spaniard and Stano in the lead at the moment of truth.
A luxury quartet to play for the three medals. The first to slightly fall behind was Stano and just when the last lap was about to begin the walker from Cuenca unleashed the perfect storm, a dry, incontestable attack, impossible for Bonfim and Martín to respond to.
Unstoppable, he headed towards the finish line to complete the race and take gold with a time of 1h18:55, while behind him the Brazilian won silver with 1h19:09 and Martín took bronze with 1h19:11, just one second behind the Italian Massimo Stano, champion in Tokyo 2020.
The young McGrath dropped off with three kilometres to go and suffered, finishing in seventeenth place (1h20:32) and Diego García Carrera lost the pace of the leading group well before and finished thirty-third with 1h23:10.
