While everyone is hurrying, he sits, chatting and telling stories with his partner Tiago Pereira. The era of smiling champions. Pogacar, Alcaraz, Jordan Díaz. The epic of tenderness. So much calm, Cuban style. In a moment, on the track, in the Olympic stadium, the greatest European champions of the moment, in the world, converge. The best brands. The Olympic 400m hurdles champion, Warholm, wins the test in 46.98s, with 13 steps between hurdles to the eighth. She is succeeded in the ring by Femke Bol, the phenomenal Dutchwoman, 52.49s, better, in her distance duel, than the Olympic queen of the event, Sydney McLaughlin. The duels in Paris, so close, are drawn in the Roman air, before the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, and on the high jump track, the excessive champion, half his face with a beard, the other cheek, clean, champion Olympic in 21 and European too, now, 2.37m. And they are very good. Everyone goes crazy with them, but none of them are as great, on a night in which the heat gives way to the breeze, light as their steps, as fast on the stage, as the two Caribbean athletes, one with the green shirt of Portugal , another Spanish orange gold, Pedro Pablo Pichardo and Jordan Díaz, who star in the best competition, perhaps, that is remembered in triple jump, or at least as enormous as the one in México 68 perhaps, Saneyev against Prudencio against Gentile.
It is the night of the phenomena. The most phenomenal of all is a long and thin kid, 23 years old, a Spaniard born in Havana who trains in Guadalajara, between the noises of the highway that passes by the runway and those of the planes that take off from the neighboring Barajas airport, under the orders of Iván Pedroso, who should be called Midas, since everything he touches is gold, Yulimar Rojas, Ana Peleteiro, and Jordan Díaz, who in his first competition wearing the Spanish national team shirt jumps 18.18 meters in his fifth attempt, and he is proclaimed European champion. Only two athletes have jumped more in history, the world record holder for 29 years, Jonathan Edwards (18.29m) and the American Christian Taylor (18.21m).
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The value of the victory, beyond the title, the value of a fight that is the bomb, is certified by the fact that the second, none other than the Olympic champion, another of the best in history, Pedro Pablo Pichardo Peralta — “Don’t forget the fourth P, my mother gets angry,” he says, with a sense of humor despite not having won—he also jumps more than 18 meters, 18.04m. Never in the history of any triple competition, whether European, world, or Olympic, has someone who jumped more than 18 meters not taken gold. No one had ever won a European Championship with a jump of more than 18 meters either. Fly one of Edwards’ records, his 17.99m from the European Championships in Budapest 98.
“It was a boxing match in which we did not spare the blows, the genius,” continues Pichardo, who starts the fight with 17.51m. In a very fast one-two, Jordan, the Havana native, responds to the jaw of the jumper from Santiago de Cuba, who does not feel the blow, because in his second attempt he flies in slow motion to lengthen his legs in the air, suspended, 70 hundredths that They are a century, the rhythm of an orchestra conductor in adagio, a stocking of Curro cracking his hip. The beauty that impresses. It could be the knockout blow.
“It was a good show. It was a very nice competition. I knew it had to be done this way,” Pichardo continues. “With the conditions that the boy and the others who are missing also have. “You have to start from the beginning.”
Díaz, seven years younger, “the boy,” Pichardo tells him, has never been taller than 17.87m. He had never passed. No one had ever demanded that he reach his limit. He had never competed at this level. The jumps happen. A null, and 17.96m for the fourth. He approaches. “Feet back and run, a little more,” Pedroso shouts. “He told me that I had to keep running, that he was facing me long before the table and, maybe, I ran, I went out, I don’t know, what I have always done and for me.”
He loses the little inhibition, a tiny bit of doubt, when entering the stage. A small loss of speed that he, one of the few who the more he runs, the more he jumps, and can reach more than 11 meters per second on the board, like that, without apparent effort, so light, so fast. In the second, the step, it reaches more than 12 meters, and bounces infinitely. He no longer loses speed. One megasecond. He bounces infinitely on the hollow platform, and the bounce gives him progress. The stone he bounces three times on the surface of the water, without sinking. Pace in the race, rebound, advance. Triple jump. 18.18m in the fifth. The knockout blow. The sign of champions, heart, brain, guts.
Pedroso approaches. “He tells me lots of bad Cuban words that I don’t want to say here,” Jordan remembers. “But yes, very happy, he was very happy.”
“I dreamed of a jump like that, yes,” he says. “But doing it is the complicated part. It has been a competition that has pushed me to the limit, because my coach says I have no limits, but my legs are responding differently than what my coach tells me.”
“Losing by jumping more than 18 is crazy, it’s crazy,” says Pichardo. “It reminded me of 2015 when he was jumping against Taylor. He reminded me of those times.”
The two meet in two months in Paris, in another Olympic stadium. “Paris is going to be another competition, there are going to be many more athletes. And although I have jumped 18.18m, the other athletes will do it incredible, that is clear to me. It is going to be a super complicated competition and we will have to fight, as always.”
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2024-06-11 22:15:23
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