Watching the hustle and bustle that occurs on stage is fascinating.
The chronicler wonders how it is possible that nothing ever happens.
There are hardly any accidents on the athletics tracks, no matter how much the middle-distance runners dash around, blind with lactic acid, down lane one, while the hurdlers set up a fence on lane four and the sprinters stretch in the inner corridor, the pole vaulters they face down in front of the mat and the jumpers count steps, fifteen, whatever they may be, until the jumping table.
(Dimitri Bascou, the Frenchman who tore a hamstring in his semifinal of the 60 hurdles, limps towards the exit of the track, and is so sore that he has to hurry when he crosses the long corridor: here comes his teammate Erwan Konate) .
Jorge Ureña (29), the best Spanish combinero and one of the best on the continent -he is a European champion who will not reissue the title-, disputes the 60 hurdles (he is sixth at this point in the heptathlon) and then sits on the bench the pole, to wait their turn in the sixth test.
And since the bench is attached to the long corridor, which runs behind him, from time to time he takes a look at the jumpers.
Well, that’s where Jaime Guerra (23) comes from.
Aerolíneas Guerra, calls himself on his Instagram profile.
Aerolíneas Guerra, who lives in Sant Boi and trains in Cornellà and has morphological characteristics that resemble Eusebio Cáceres and Yago Lamela -not very tall, powerful lower body, more compact than big-, is competing in the first grand final of his career sports and receives input from all sides.
This is Iván Pedroso, longitude legend, who advises him from a wing of the stands.
And Maria Duran, his coach at Cornellà, is talking to him, who is watching him from the other side.
Even Ureña, with his eyes, tells him things.
While Quique Llopis signs 7.58 to win his 60 hurdles semifinal (and thus seems to say: “this afternoon’s final is going to be mine”; it takes place at 19:05 Spanish), the wonderful Miltiadis Tentoglou (24), Olympic champion , indoor world champion and European champion, dispatches the longitude title.
8.30m in the first attempt of the Greek, goodbye, this is mine.
Jaime Guerra counts steps and is abstracted.
There are 18 strides to the table, and then to fly.
He gets a discreet first jump, at 7.65m, he has risen very far from the table. He improves somewhat in the second (7.67m) and finally accelerates in the third (7.84m), when he eventually falls within a centimeter of the bronze held by Radek Juska, the big Czech, and reasonably close to eight meters, which is where the medals should really be disputed.
What happens is that then things get complicated.
Juska goes further, up to 7.94m, Saraboyukov shoots up to 7.97m and the Romanian Gabriel Bitan grows in the fifth flight to project up to 8.00m.
This, the Romanian, has done his homework, he has gone up to those eight meters, and for that reason he takes over the bronze (Tentoglou wins, with Tobias Montler second, with 8.19m).
The afternoon offers the last medal options for the Spanish. Starting at 5:05 p.m. in Spain, they will be fighting Quique Llopis (60 hurdles), Adel Mechaal (3,000, where he will chase the “monstrous” Jakob Ingebrigtsen), Adrián Ben and Lorea Ibarzábal (800) and the men’s relay, something less than after the injuries to Iñaki Cañal and Manuel Guijarro.