Paris 2024, Jacobs and Ali in the 100m semi-finals. Marcell: “I didn’t like myself”

Paris 2024, Jacobs and Ali in the 100m semi-finals. Marcell: “I didn’t like myself”

Marcell Jacobs and Chituru Ali in the semifinals in the 100 meters at the Paris 2024 Olympics. In today’s heats, Saturday 3 August, the two Italians achieved qualification. Jacobs, Olympic champion in Tokyo, ran 10”05, finishing in second place in the sixth heat with an unenthusiastic performance: the Italian struggles in the first part of the match with an unfluid action, but with power he conquers second place.

Ali finished second in his heat in 10.12 seconds behind Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala (10.08 seconds). American Noah Lyles, one of their favorites, finished second in his heat in 10.04 seconds behind Britain’s Louie Hinchliffe in 9.98 seconds.

Paris 2024, Jacobs: “I didn’t like myself at all, but when you qualify it’s okay”

“I didn’t like myself at all, the sensations weren’t great, but I told myself that today it was just the battery. I was heavy in the first part of the race, I wasn’t able to let myself go as I wanted, but qualifying was important and tomorrow will be another day. When you qualify it’s always good, we’ll see about correcting the two things that in quotation marks didn’t go well”. “The track is good if you can activate your feet, as I didn’t do: you can run fast. I didn’t see my opponents, I’ll watch and try to understand who to pay more attention to tomorrow. I’d be lying if I said that I’m here just to be here, the moment I entered the crowd applauded and tomorrow I’ll try to give something to myself and the crowd”, concluded the Italian athlete.

“Impressions? So-so, I didn’t start as I would have liked and this didn’t allow me to find the rhythm in the second part of the race but the goal today was to get through the heat, save as much energy as possible and tomorrow we will have to start much more determined and strong. They have all shown that they run really fast, tomorrow there will be only 8 places, there are many who can aspire to this final and we will have to not make any mistakes and push 100%”, added Jacobs.

“They all pushed hard, they didn’t make incredible times anyway but they are the batteries and tomorrow they will arrive with a different mentality and energy and it will be hard work. The track is actually fast but you have to interpret it in the right way. I started a little too hard without looking for agility, and I wasn’t able to exploit it as I would have liked but tomorrow that will be the goal. I had this start that didn’t allow me to find the frequencies I would have liked in the running phase”, concluded the Italian sprinter.