A still image from the athletics track of Tokyo 2020 has gone viral on social media. Niger and Germany were side by side in the lane in the fourth battery of the women’s 200 meters and, before the start, the official graphics obviously showed the flags with their respective abbreviations: the written “Nig-Ger”, which makes up the derogatory and offensive word used to address African Americans.
A small gaffe that went worldwide that embarrassed the direction of Tokyo 2020, which, on the other hand, could not do otherwise. On the same athletics track today, Friday 6 August, the sporting history of Italy was further written: the relay race composed of Lorenzo Patta, Marcell Jacobs, Eseosa Desalu and Filippo Tortu she incredibly managed to win the gold medal, with Tortu completing the comeback over Great Britain, mocking her at the finish by just a penny.
Among other things, for Jacobs it was a double triumph, which consigns him even more to the history books: the 100-meter / 4×100 relay brace at the Olympics in the last 50 years had only been successful for four other athletes. All with very heavy names: they are Carl Lewis (1984), Donovan Bailey (1996), Maurice Green (2000) and Usain Bolt (2012).
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