At seven in the morning, when the alarm played for Fatima Diame ,. The Galician slept happy after having won a bronze medal on the eve, so this time, contrary to what happened in the European Appealoorn, two weeks ago, he did not put the anthem of Celta or any music to lift his friend’s mood. He didn’t need it. The Valencian returned hours later with another third place in the final in length thanks to a better jump of 6.72m. The second medal for Spanish athletics in the world championship on Nanjing covered track (China).
Fatima Diame smiles after winning her second consecutive medal in a World Cup indoor. Again bronze. “I don’t get off the car anymore,” he says, happy to see each other among the best. The place that corresponds to him by talent, for a potential that everyone sees and that it was difficult to believe. But his successes are a song to nonconformity. The Saltador decided in 2021 to fly from the nest, to leave the training group of Rafa Blanquer, a second father for her, to move to Guadalajara, where they trained the best, had suffered a lot. He was not happy and anxiety had left her in the chassis.
Diame was not empty of Valencia. Before, Blanquer, the first Spaniard to exceed eight meters in length, taught him to jump with both legs. “Someday it can be useful,” he said. Years later, a foot pain began to distress Iván Pedroso’s student, her new coach. A bone edema in the heel prevented him from beating in fullness with the right leg. So he decided to change, remember the teaching of Blanquer, and try with the left. The change had his intríngulis. The race had to cut it a step and the flight became a simple impulse, without kicked in the air, without displays.
The first experience, in the Spanish Championship, was not good. Diame, 28, stayed out of the podium. In the European he was already close to the medals and finished fourth. That result encouraged her to make one more effort. To get on the Spanish team plane and fly to Nanjing, in the Yangsé River Delta. That effort had a prize. The first Diame jump in Nanjing’s cube was good. The Valencian entered the table at 33.4 km/h, beat and only gave an insignificant margin, 2.5cm. A flight to 6.72m. Only one athlete, the Tejana Claire Bryant, jumped more than her: 6.76m. It was his day. The American, forged with the Gators of the University of Florida, improved in the third up to 6.90m, and in the fifth, up to 6.96m. Gold was his. His first World Cup and his first title. The Bagameña Anthaya Charlton, the little sister of the worldwide 60 -meter world fence, devynne Charlton, who had jumped 6.98 this winter, but accused the inexperience, at 21 years, and ended sixth, and ended sixth.
Dame began to risk. But Pedroso always tells her that she is good when she doesn’t think and jumps relaxed. “When I already want to go for the brand, I block me,” he would recognize later.
The rivals did not improve and Diame remained second with the passage of the rounds. In the last one, when he already had a medal in his pocket, the Switzerland Annik Kälin, an athlete who was fourth in the heptatlon in the Paris games, achieved a longer jump (6.83m) and went down the Spanish from second to third place. He could not answer Dicame and had to settle for a bronze medal that, looked with perspective, remembering those days of so much pain, is a resounding success. “It has been a very hard covers, as I said in the European. I am very happy but it was very good and the nulls were very long. Although I found myself a little tired, but I saw myself there in the fight. I do not know if 6.90 was going to be able but more than 6.80 yes. It is a medal, I am not going to complain.”
The morning session in Nanjing left one of the great surprises of the World Cup. The Ukraine Yaroslava Mahuchikh, the world -jump world of high jump and Olympic champion, could only be third in a final dominated by two Australians who jumped 1.97m: Eleanor Patterson, who took the money, and Nicola Olyslagers, the jumper of the notebook, where he scores his sensations as soon as he got off the title, he revalidated the title. Conquered last year in Glasgow. The story was repeated: from that World Cup no one had managed to defeat Mahuchikh. Australia did not get a gold and a silver in the same test since 1968.
