Just like Usain Bolt did, Noah Lyles (26) puts on his show.
He raises his arms as if a spirit were blessing him, as if a sunbeam filled him with light.
Pump up your biceps like a bull.
He hesitates at rivals, looks them in the eye, runs back and forth, surprises us. Well, from what we knew, and at least until this year, hers was the 200: in this test, she has the gold of Doha 2019 and that of Eugene 2022.
(He'll also be looking for another gold in the 200 here in Budapest.)
What happens is that he does not have the same wit as Bolt: there is something excessive, burlesque, in Lyles's drift. Perhaps he brags too much, perhaps he delights and entertains himself in the art of humiliating the other, of trampling on him and throwing him out of the game.
When he competes with Erriyon Knighton, the prodigious child of the 200, he pretends to shoot him by overtaking him on the tiles.
Also, Lyles doesn't run as much as the Jamaican did either.
If the Jamaican lightning clocked 9.58 in those golden years of the first decade, the American is several tenths behind, this time at 9.83, that's one and a half strides behind Bolt, he's more like Bailey's time, Christie or Greene, the best in the nineties. It is evident that the short speed has regressed.
A couple of hours earlier, the Spanish 1,500m souffle deflated.
Marta Pérez and Esther Guerrero fall, knocked out of the final despite registering magnificent times: 4m02s96 for Marta Pérez and 4m00s13 in the case of Guerrero.
Both are victims of the times that run, cruel for all.
Faith Kipyegon, the world record holder, flies, Laura Muir and Diribe Welteji fly, all on the border of 3m55s, and the indecipherable Sifan Hassan also flies, the Dutch woman who one day wins the London marathon and a couple of months later shines in these 1,500 from Budapest (he qualified for the final with 3m55s48) or, like on Saturday, he competed in the 10,000m and fought them to the checkered line, when he finally melted under Gudaf Tsegay's push and rushed onto the synthetic, leaving himself behind. a seal on the right elbow and another on the left knee.
(In a single day, that of Saturday, and in barely half an hour, Hassan crashed and Femke Bol crashed, another great star from the Netherlands, destabilized in the straight line of the mixed relay).
Then the 1,500 boys run, and another Dutchman, the sensational Niels Laros (19), European U20 champion of 1,500 and 5,000, plays Ingebrigtsen: cheeky, he snacks on his rivals to sign 3m32s74, break the national record and knock down the two Spaniards, Adel Mechaal and Mo Katir, who lose their way in the last straight line and are ninth and tenth, both in 3m33s and are out of the final and seem to understand nothing.
Katir leaves without saying a word, goes grumbling through the mixed zone, does not listen to reason, there is no one to stop him, and Mechaal stops, which is the opposite, all reasons.
-The problem is in the format of the Spanish Championships -Mechaal laments-: no one, except Kenya, has Trials like ours. To enter the World Cups, we have to prepare thoroughly. And to prepare them, I have lost two weeks of charge. I have been fifteen days without touching weights or climbing slopes. And athletics are tenths. And those tenths can be lost anywhere. Anyone who understands this knows what I'm talking about: Katir and I have paid for it.
Who does not lament is Mario García Romo (24), the third of the Spanish, the Salamanca from Villar de Gallimazo who lives and trains and studies Chemistry at the University of Mississippi and who, prudent and measured, is always attentive and well placed .
And well placed, he stands in the tables, fourth with 3m35s26 (the first six passed, without play-offs for times), while out of the corner of his eye he contemplates how his roommate in Mississippi, the American Yared Nuguse, is also advancing - "we'll go to the pool together one of these days", says García Romo-, and the indestructible Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian who also plays Ingebrigtsen (or Lyles): he opens up on the curve and, when the others gasp and squirm, he winks at her to the stands, he says: 'here I am, stop me'.
And that, stop him.
There is also no way to stop Joshua Cheptegei (26), the best long-distance runner today, the Ugandan who signs 53s in the last lap to knock out the Kenyan Ebenyo, silver, and his most intense adversary, the Ethiopian Selemon Barega (bronze), and add his third gold in the 10,000m (27m51s42), as many as Mo Farah and only one of the wonderful Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele.
(Perhaps fed up with almost always winning on the track, Cheptegei will debut in the marathon this December: he will do so in Valencia).
And there is no way to stop the Serbian Ivana Vuleta, an eternal contender for any title, who appropriates the length in these World Cups: she goes up to 7.14m and silences the revolt of her rivals, among whom was the Spanish Fátima Diamé, sixth at the end with 6.82m (just six centimeters from the podium), the best mark of her life.
