Jacobs’s real European challenge is the challenge posed by history

There are 27 men who have won Olympic gold in the 100 metres, and only twelve of them are still alive. To give you an idea, that’s far fewer than the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Literature. That is precisely why, on 1 August 2021, Marcell Lamont Jacobs got himself into trouble. On that day, on the track in Tokyo, he won the Olympic title in an event in which no Italian male athlete had ever reached the final. And at that very moment, the problem arose: how would my excellent colleague Omero explain that the honour of the Olympic gold medal – the highest sporting accolade for a mere mortal – brings with it the fatal envy of the gods?

From that moment onwards, Jacobs was forced to chase not his opponents, but the legend itself; and whilst you can catch up with and overtake an opponent, it is far more difficult to do so with someone from a different era – the champions who, before you, made history in the sport.

In the case of Jacobs, a young man born in El Paso, Texas, to an American father and a mother from Desenzano sul Garda – where he actually grew up – his task ahead of the European Championships will not simply be to win, but to take on two sprinting legends. The first is a Ukrainian of Polish origin, Valery Borzov, who in 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games brought the Americans to tears twice in the 100m and 200m: he was wearing the Soviet Union’s jersey and, in the midst of the Cold War, his successes were tantamount to urinating in the Rose Garden at the White House. The second is a Jamaican who grew up in Acton, on the outskirts of London, a reminder that the British Empire knew how to recognise the treasures of the lands it had conquered: Linford Christie – that was the name of the lad from the Caribbean – was given a passport and an England jersey, in which he went on to win the 100 metres at the Barcelona Olympics and the World Championships in Stuttgart, ahead of a certain Carlton Frederick Lewis, known to everyone as Carl.

So why, then, are Borzov and Christie – far more so than those who will actually be competing alongside him on the track – Marcell Jacobs’ rivals at the European Championships in Birmingham? Simple: the Ukrainian in the Soviet jersey and the Anglo-Jamaican are the only ones to have added three consecutive European titles in the 100 metres to their Olympic gold. Valery in Athens, Helsinki and Rome between ’71 and ’74; Linford in Stuttgart, Split and again Helsinki between ’86 and ’94. The pursuit of history thus demands that Marcell, following his victories in Munich and Rome, even the score with a third gold medal to complement his Olympic triumph.

No easy feat, and not just because Borzov and Christie are worlds apart in time. The race takes place in England, on the home turf of Marcell’s most formidable rivals, who, incidentally, share a similar story to Christie’s. Zharnel Hughes, a former European champion in the 100 metres in Berlin and the 200 metres in Munich, hails from Anguilla, and it’s only natural to make jokes about a sprinter who’s hard to catch. He’s competing at the European Championships because his homeland – with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants on the northernmost of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles – is a British Overseas Territory.

The Union Jack jersey is the only way to compete in major competitions, given that Anguilla has no Olympic Committee, but only a Governor (Mrs Julia Crouch, for those interested) and, alongside ‘God Save the King’, a national anthem, ‘God Save Anguilla’ (they’d be proud of that in Comacchio). Given the latest results, Jacobs’ biggest threat could come not from Hughes but from Romell Glave, who hails from Manchester – not the city where Rolls-Royce was founded, but the one in Jamaica.

His idol – a fact that barely makes the news – is Usain Bolt, with whom he shares a passion for football and cricket. Having moved to Croydon, on the western outskirts of London, at the age of 16, he too proved to be fast, and since the British are less fussy about such things when there’s an advantage to be had than they were about the Brexit vote, they granted him a British passport. Marcell knows him well: Glave came third in Rome at the European Championships two years ago, and at his season opener in Savona he even finished ahead of him. Then, in the windy conditions of Eisenstadt, Austria, the pecking order was re-established, with Jacobs leaving him in his wake with a fabulous 9.67 seconds – a time that only the excessive gusts of Aeolus prevented from being officially recognised.

The gist is that Marcell will play two matches: the first away from home, as the fixture takes place on the home turf of his British-Caribbean rivals; the second hypothetical, driven by the statistical narrative that would place him on a par with two legends. Marcell’s season, which began with his return under the guidance of Paolo Camossi – the former Italian triple jump record-holder who, as a coach, had the idea of harnessing his speed not for the long jump but for the 100 metres – has been a crescendo: following his aforementioned debut in Savona, a first run under 10 seconds at the Golden Gala in Rome, then the 9.96 in Paris and the high-altitude highlight in Eisenstadt.

A time of 9.67 seconds, even allowing for the 4-metre tailwind, easily equates to a 9.90 under normal conditions, and by this standard, Marcell seems to have no rivals, at least on the Old Continent. Then, after the minor setback of an injury that forced him to withdraw from Monte Carlo, came the sigh of relief at seeing him in action at the Italian National Championships in Florence, where he won in 10.12 seconds – a result determined by opposition that posed no real threat and a false start that was, shall we say, overlooked on the basis of his standing. Let’s add that the Brescia-born sprinter handles the rounds very well: in his victories – the Tokyo Olympics, but also the world title in the 60 metres in Belgrade and his two European titles – he has consistently improved his performances from the heats through to the semi-finals and the final.

The same thing happened in Paris, where in the final he clocked 9.85 seconds – his third-best performance ever under standard conditions – just three hundredths of a second off the bronze that would have sent him onto the Olympic podium for the second time. Here lies the only gap that still cannot be bridged with Borzov and Christie, who added a bronze and a silver respectively to their gold medals at other editions of the Games. But such is the fate of those who make the gods envious and are forever forced to chase, as in Zeno’s paradox: Marcell might well ask Achilles for advice, as Achilles never managed to catch up with the tortoise.