ROME, 4 Jun: Hardly anyone outside of Italy had heard of Marcell Jacobs before he succeeded Usain Bolt as the Olympic 100 meter champion in Tokyo.
\nThree injury-filled years have passed, and the Texas-born Italian is almost as big of a mystery now as he was then.
\nAmerican sprinter Noah Lyles is deservedly garnering the spotlight entering the Paris Games after sweeping three golds at last year\u2019s world championships. A host of other racers have dipped under the 10-second mark this year, too \u2014 an achievement that Jacobs hasn\u2019t accomplished in nearly two years.
\nSo Jacobs also has the unusual status of being both the defending champion while remaining an underdog for the biggest race of the Olympics.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s good because I can stay under the radar. I can do my preparation, my race, without think(ing) about what the other people think about me,\u201d Jacobs told The Associated Press. \u201cI don\u2019t need to win all the races, but I want to arrive at the Olympics and win again.\u201d
\nHaving dealt with a series of physical issues, the 29-year-old Jacobs hasn\u2019t won all that much over the past two years.
\nHe withdrew from the semifinals at the 2022 worlds with an injured thigh muscle and then didn\u2019t qualify for the final at worlds last year. He withdrew from numerous other races, too, and was even hospitalized for a night in Kenya because of a stomach virus.
\nThe injuries and the lack of results led Jacobs to drop his longtime coach, Paolo Camossi, who had guided him since his days as a long jumper, and move to Jacksonville, Florida to work with experienced coach Rana Reider and an elite group of sprinters including Andre De Grasse, Trayvon Bromell, Jerome Blake and Abdul Hakim Sani Brown.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s been the biggest thing,\u201d Reider said, \u201ctrying to figure out why he was carrying so many injuries for so many years. \u2026 So we\u2019ve kind of had to unpeel the onion and find a way. We\u2019ve found some stuff that we\u2019ve been able to fix and we\u2019re working our way into being 100% healthy.\u201d
\nOn the health front, so far, so good: Jacobs hasn\u2019t been bothered by physical issues in his four races since April.
\nThe results and the times, though, remain a work in progress: 10.11 seconds in Jacksonville, Florida on April 27; 10.07 in Rome on May 18; 10.19 in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on May 28; and 10.03 in Oslo, Norway, on May 30 \u2014 all a long way off the 9.80 he won with in Tokyo.
\nBut the times are not far from Jacobs\u2019 results before Tokyo.
\nJacobs hadn\u2019t cracked 10 seconds before the last Olympic year and dipped only slightly under that mark twice before entering Tokyo \u2014 which was one reason why questions were raised after he won gold.
\n\u201cWe spoke a lot about that criticism but it hardly even bothered him. We didn\u2019t even need to work on that \u2014 doping and the stories like that,\u201d said Nicoletta Romanazzi, the mental coach whom Jacobs credited with helping him achieve his goals in Tokyo.
\n\u201cOther items were more complex, like helping him deal with all of the changes (in his life),\u201d Romanazzi added. \u201cSuccess can be scary.\u201d
\nJacobs also helped Italy to gold in the 4×100 relay in the Azzurri\u2019s breakout performance in Tokyo and became an instant celebrity at home. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROME, 4 Jun: Hardly anyone outside of Italy had heard of Marcell Jacobs before he succeeded Usain Bolt as the Olympic 100 meter champion in Tokyo. Three injury-filled years have passed, and the Texas-born Italian is almost as big of a mystery now as he was then. American sprinter Noah Lyles is deservedly garnering the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-241651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}