Carlos Mayo’s expression changed in the final stretch. The timer, back there, didn’t lie: the Spanish half marathon record, Fabián Roncero’s old record, was going to be his. There were 500 meters left and euphoria and emotion collided on his face. A last effort with shouts and an explosion of happiness as soon as he crossed the finish line in Valencia and saw that he had done 59m 39s, 13 seconds less than Roncero’s time on April 1, 2001. A few minutes later, Laura from Extremadura Luengo also achieved the Spanish record for the distance (1h 9m 41s), lowering Trihas Gebre’s 2018 record by 10 seconds.
Mayo, an Aragonese with heterochromia, one eye of each color, like David Bowie, launched a protesting message after a time away from his best version. “This is dedicated to those who have not stopped believing in me and to those who stopped believing. The truth is that I have had a bad time. It has not been easy”. The Adidas athlete is the only Spaniard to whom the brand has awarded a pair of the famous Pro Evo 1 of only 136 grams. On Thursday he debuted them, yesterday he used them to beat the Spanish record and quickly put them in a bag for the Valencia marathon, on December 3, where he will fight for the minimum for the Paris Games.
The new record holder went wild and reached kilometer five in a time (13m 58s) that even allowed him to think of Julien Wanders’ European record (59m 13s). “It crossed my mind, but then I asked myself to calm down.” The hare that was supposed to guide this second group of athletes did not appear and Mayo decided to collaborate with the Portuguese Samuel Barata and the Italian Pietro Riva to each run one kilometer. Mayo sensed that Roncero’s record, almost a rarity in the days of shoes without a carbon plate, was within reach. His coach, Juan Carlos Galán, doesn’t like training that is too explosive, but one day he knew it. “The feeling comes to you one day when you look in the mirror and see that you are ready to run very fast.”
The euphoria of May contrasted with the almost undaunted face of Laura Luengo, 25, an athlete who shows her head among the elite without losing her seriousness. “I, unlike Carlos, never thought that she could break a Spanish record. And in the race, since I am very bad at mathematics, it is very difficult for me to calculate the times, but I have seen the splits every five kilometers and then I have already sensed that I could do it. I only worried about going smoothly and that the kilometers would pass. I think the women’s marathon and half marathon records can still be greatly improved.”
The new record holder, who has studied Law and Business Administration, and trains in the group of Juan del Campo and Luismi Martín Berlanas, achieves her greatest sporting success that can propel her into her marathon debut, on December 3.
In the head, Kiwibot Kandie ran out of hares as soon as he started because he came out determined to recover the world record that he achieved in Valencia in 2020 and that Jacob Kiplimo took from him the following year by a second. The Kenyan left with Yomif Kejelcha and Hagos Gebrhiwet, faster over shorter distances, which led them to not give him a replacement and thus ruin the chance for a record. His cunning was cut short with an attack by Kandie with 400 meters to go that no one could respond to. All three, and a fourth, Barega, managed to go under 58 minutes (this had only happened in Valencia in 2020). Kandie achieved the best world time of the year (57m 40s), but was nine seconds away from the record.
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