The 800m runner finished third in her repechage series with 1:59.81, just one hundredth of a second off her personal best. Her teammate Lorena Martín is also not behind. Jorge Ureña is still in the decathlon battle, where the javelin and 1500m await this afternoon.
A session in which Armand Duplantis was faced with the administrative process of qualifying for the pole vault final could not have had a better host than Renaud Lavillenie. Olympic champion twelve years ago, he performed the un, deux, trois with the Brigadier, three strokes of the baton indicating that magic was now free to flow through the Stade de France (once again filled to the brim with that childlike joy that only the Games are capable of providing).
The early-rising decathlon faced the start of its final day with the 110-metre hurdles, where Jorge Ureña (best timer of the trio, 13.88) occupied second place (14.29, 9 hundredths of a second behind his record this year) in heat 2, after a good start and two brilliant first thirds of the race, followed by a less effective final part, as he suffered from the break in rhythm caused by touching the seventh and eighth hurdles. He added 937 points to his account (the event that has brought him the most in Saint-Denis), which placed him 18th in the summary with 5039.
The discus came, the sixth, where he had to become great, to make fun of the statistics, since all those in group A, his group, had thrown more than him (41.36) this season. But once again the round and flat artifact was not kind to the Onil native, who evolved from less to more -that’s true- until sealing the following balance: 35.34, 39.54 and 40.92. 683 points in the bag that, at the doors of the pole vault, placed him 20th with 5722.
Jorge had not yet finished his performance in the throwing circle when the women’s 800m repechage heats began. There were four of them, and the winner of each one and the two fastest of the rest would advance to the semi-finals (tomorrow at 20:35). Lorena Martín from Salamanca was assigned the first one, where all but her and the Brazilian Flavia María de Lima had gone under two minutes at some point, with the highlight being the 1:57.26 of the Ugandan Halimah Nakaayi. The objective of Uriel Reguero’s disciple was not difficult to guess: to appeal to her fighting character and get close to her personal best (2:00.33, achieved this year). The rest would be dictated by the competition… and she said no. She was at the back of the pack, crouching low to try to take her chances after the last corner, but she was unable to change when things went wrong and the favourites, led by Australian Abbey Caldwell (2:00.7), launched an attack. She finished 7th in 2:03.04.
Lorea Ibarzabal from Madrid (born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) competed in the last race, in which she started with the sixth best time (1:59.80). Her case is motivating: six international appearances, including the five major events on the tartan: World Championships, European Championships (outdoor and indoor) and Olympic Games. All in less than two years and at the age of 30 (she will compete in November); an example of love for athletics and blind confidence in her skills. All that, plus a fantastic regularity of over two minutes (yesterday she clocked 2:00.52) and a reiterated positive response on the big stages, invited optimism: And we were not wrong!
What a tactical lesson, the makings of a veteran, a professor of strategy. Letting things happen, temporizing until the bell rang, knowing that the race would be the fastest of all (57.2 for the 400; 58.2 for Lorea, seventh, second to last), an unmissable opportunity to get in on time. She kept growing until she entered the straight, fighting for everything, opening up as much as she could to begin the process of overtaking. She was in that when she touched the Finnish Eveliina Määttänen twice (a rock wall that defended her position firmly), the last of them so rudely that she stumbled; who knows if the handful of hundredths of a second she needed to beat the 1:59.65 (cut-off time) did not disappear in that micro-battle. What we do know is that she had a fantasy epilogue (third in 1:59.81, her second best time ever) and that, if she has to fall, it is better to do it like a great athlete. Better to do it like Lorea Ibarzabal.
With today’s mark, Ibarzabal has four times under the two-minute barrier in her entire sporting career (three achieved this year 2024), equalling the Spanish record holder Mayte Zúñiga in this historical top, also with four, although both are far from the 23 times that Maite Martínez has done in her life.
The morning session was closed by the decathlon pole vault, where Ureña failed to clear the bar three times at the first height he attempted (4.40 m), finishing with 0 points. What a pity.
