Marcell Jacobs, super challenge before the European Championships.
Marcell Jacobs, challenge
The’gold versus the’Olympic silver medalist. The Italian champion against the American star. It’ll be Fred Kerley who will be Marcell Jacobs’s main opponent in the 100 meters at the Bislett Games in Oslo, the stage of the Wanda Diamond League scheduled for Thursday, May 30, eight days before the start of the Rome 2024 European Championships (June 7-12). And for Jacobs, reigning European champion, it will be precisely the Norwegian one that will be the last competitive outing before the assault on the gold medal on the new track of the Olympic Stadium: semifinals and final on Saturday, June 8.
The Olympic champion, who on Tuesday morning tested the new track at the Stadio dei Marmi where this Saturday è is expected in the 100 meters at the Roma Sprint Festival, will be on the track in Oslo two days after the Ostrava engagement on May 28 (Continental Tour Gold) and will face one of the greatest rivals of the international circus, that Fred Kerley with whom last year fueled the rivalry, always in mutual respect, in blows of posts on social media. It is a challenge that could be repeated in the Olympic final in Paris, after featuring the unforgettable one in Tokyo, won by Jacobs with a European record of 9.80, four hundredths better than Kerley’s 9.84.
Jacobs and Kerley competed directly only three times. Less than a month before Tokyo, the Blue of the Golden Flames proved his dazzling form in Monaco with 9.99 (Kerley 10.15). After the Olympic final, it was two years to see the’one against the’other again: Diamond League in Xiamen, China, last September, with Kerley 9.96 and Jacobs 10.05. This year in the distance duel the U.S. 2022 world champion from Eugene did better, though without exaggeration: 10.03 on March 16 in Florida remains the best time, while in the two Diamond League outings in China he ran 10.17 (Xiamen) and 10.11 (Suzhou). The 10.11 è chrono was also the one in the Azure’s debut in Jacksonville at the end of April. Oslo organizers also announced the presence of South African Akani Simbine, fourth in Tokyo. The Olympic challenge è has just begun.
