In history, in the skies, Emil Zatopek; on earth, in Paris, now, Sifan Hassan. Or, better yet, Sifan Zatopek Hassan, the Dutchwoman who, by winning the marathon (2h 22m 55s, Olympic record) alongside the Invalides, not invalids, completed a feat very close to that of the legendary and rebellious Czech, winner of the gold medal in the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
In Paris, 72 years later, Hassan, who hates running, an addiction that makes her curse herself in the middle of races and ask herself, like everyone else, what am I doing here – “but it’s so beautiful what I feel when I win that I can’t stop trying,” she says – competed in all three distances as well. She won bronze on the purple track in the 5,000m and 10,000m, where the untouchable Kenyan Beatrice Chebet won, and in the toughest and highest-level marathon in Olympic history she won the third Olympic gold of her life, three years after the double 5,000m and 10,000m in Tokyo, when she also won bronze in the 1,500m. And she touched her long hair with a shiny graphite headband that cooled it down, as if her head were a bottle of precious champagne that can only be appreciated very cold. Not quite Zatopek, but very close, as much as the new, fierce competition times and level allow, where speed and endurance go hand in hand, and the ability to recover is similar to that of Tour de France riders. Before the marathon, in 10 days, Hassan had completed 50 laps of the track at full speed. Two 5,000m races and one 10,000m race.
“Every moment of the race I regretted having run the 5,000m and the 10,000m. I told myself that if I hadn’t done it, I would feel so much better,” she says, now a winner. “From start to finish, it was so hard. Every step of the way. I was thinking: ‘Why did I do it? What’s wrong with me?’”
Second, three seconds behind after a final rush, 150 metres, in which Hassan overtook her close to the hurdles, like the best sprinters in cycling, was the Ethiopian Tigst Assefa, who in Berlin last September had set the world record at 2h 11m 53s, a time so close to that of the best men. Third, dropped only with 500m to go to complete the 42.195 kilometres, was the Kenyan Hellen Obiri, who achieved the best time (2h 23m 10s) of a race that began two years ago, after winning bronze in the 5,000m in Tokyo and in which she has two victories in the New York marathon and one in Boston 2024.
“At the end I thought: ‘This is just a 100m sprint. Come on, Sifan. One more. Feel it, like someone sprinting 200m,” explained the champion, winner in London in 2023 on her debut at the distance, and who in Chicago, in her second marathon, had set the second best time in history, 2h 13m 44s. “When I finished, it was a release. It’s incredible. I had never experienced anything like it. Not even the other marathons I’ve run came close to this. I couldn’t stop celebrating. I felt dizzy. I wanted to lie down. Then I thought: ‘I’m the Olympic champion. How is this possible?’”
The Spanish Majida Maayouf held on with the best until the wall of the Pavé des Gardes, the terrible climb on the D181 with gradients of up to 16%, faced at kilometre 28. There, the Ethiopians and the Kenyans accelerated trying to drop Hassan, like climbing cyclists who want to kill the sprinter they know will beat them at the end. They thought they had succeeded, but on the descent, when the calves and quadriceps burn and the muscles are subjected to the greatest dangers, Hassan linked up with them again, to their despair. The three best marathon runners of the moment were left alone at the front with 600m to go. Maayouf, from Bilbao, born in Morocco 35 years ago, finished 17th (2h 28m 35s). Meritxell Soler was 25th (2h 29m 56s) and Esther Navarrete, 42nd (2h 32m 7s).
Hassan’s adventure, born in Ethiopia 31 years ago, and her triumph, proclaim the greatness of long-distance running, where the athlete, the person, faces all physical and mental limits. Almost as hard as her life experience: at 15 years old, her mother put her on a plane to Amsterdam, where she obtained refugee status and, several years later, a Dutch passport.
“I feel like I’m dreaming. I only see people on TV who are Olympic champions. The marathon is something else. When you do 42 kilometres in more than two hours and 20 minutes, you feel every step so hard and so painful,” said Hassan, a Stakhanovite of the race and of victories, and it would even take an Excel spreadsheet to match her immense list of achievements (six-time medallist at the World Championships, two of them gold, in the 1,500m and 10,000m in Doha) and sometimes touched by doubt, in the years when she trained in the United States under the orders of the sanctioned Alberto Salazar. In 2019, when Salazar fell, she began training with Tim Rowberry, also in the United States. “I am an Olympic champion. What else can I say?”
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook y Xor sign up here to receive the daily Paris Olympics newsletter.
