The Olympic trembles with the patriotic exaltation of the azzurri, which the Europeans have turned into a kind of national championship, since there is no test in which there is not a tricolor flag on the podium. Saturday night ended with Jacobs-Ali, one-two in the 100m, fifth gold in two days for the locals, and Sunday morning woke up early with Crippa-Riva, one-two in the half marathon that began with stumbles and the twins loaded on the unequals sanpietrini neighbors to the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine sanctified for resistance by the bare feet of Abebe Bikila in the Rome Games of 60. Italy obviously won by team in the men’s event and Spain was fourth —Jorge González Rivera, the Merida Express, was the best of the six Spaniards, 11th, 1h 1m 55s, personal best—, also behind Germany, third, and Israel, second, which displayed its flag and its patriotic and war proclamations through its athletes, born in Ethiopia and youth emigrants to Israel with their families.
The Spanish women – a more compact team, Laura Luengo, Esther Navarrete and Fatima Ouhaddou, 12th, 13th, 14th – achieved the bronze medal by a single second ahead of France, after Great Britain and Germany, in an event won individually by the Norwegian Karoline Grovdal, already a silver medalist in the 5,000m from Marta García’s bronze.
Roma is Bikila and he is Gianmarco Tamberi, the Olympic champion for whom the stadium vibrates more than anyone when he enters the track for the height qualification, and his mixed zone is a bubble, a parallel world, a fictional reality in which penetrates the air of the real world when Israeli marathon runners—Teferi, Ayale, Amare, Alame, Belachew, the five in the top 20—recount their tragic reality in which neither the feeling of guilt nor a thought for the 270 dead Palestinians enters. in the release on Saturday of four hostages nor compassion for the genocide of the Palestinian people for which the International Criminal Court requests the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a complaint to which various countries, including the Spanish Government, have joined.
“The happy announcement on Saturday of the release of the four hostages gave us more motivation and strength to show our fighting spirit,” says in Yiddish, and wrapped in the blue and white flag, Ayale, who assumes the duties of spokesperson for the team, to through an English interpreter. “This medal gives us the opportunity to show the world everything that is happening in our country. And even though Hamas and other organizations want to kill the Jewish people and destroy Israel, we are here and we are strong. Of course, we pray that all our hostages are released and return to their homes and families, and we also pray for peace in our country and in the world. And we dedicate this medal to our soldiers, IDF soldiers [el ejército israelí]and, of course, to all the hostages who were freed and who with the help of God will be freed.”
Gelachew, more inflamed because, he says, a friend of his who was in the OKETZ (special forces) died in the Hamas attacks on October 7, takes up his witness and continues, inflamed, with the insult. “Every day we train hard. Of course, sometimes we have no motivation because our brothers are fighting there, our friends are fighting there, some of us are dead, some of us are injured, some of us are suffering from trauma,” he says. “When we have bad times, we have to continue training, continue representing Israel, representing the IDF, representing our culture, our people. “We are very happy to fight for this victory.”
War and its miseries invade the stadium, a fictitious battlefield, in which, sadly, one of the parties, the most powerful, has no rival, because, sportingly, Palestine does not seem to exist either.
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