It would have been an arrival of cartoon, the bad running in slow motion while the good accelerates in his persecution consuming meters with his strides while the persecution advances centimeters, a child emotion, if the traces of the agonizing struggle would not have stamped so dramatically in the disfigured faces, in the tiny legs, of Amanal Petros and Alphonce Felix Simbu, who fought until the last centimeter On the very fast Mondo track of the National Stadium of Tokyo, made for the sprinters, decisive for the Marathonians.
It would have been the 100m final, a photofinish decision, a three hundredth difference between the first and the second, if they had not both run over – overwhelming at dawn, humidity of 90%, a survival test not a race – 42,194 meters for almost two hours and 10 minutes.
Never a marathon decided with such little difference, he will never forget, surely, Petros the fear that his body toured when, believing winner, with an advantage of almost 10 meters in the absence of 30, he felt behind his back -he did not need to see him although he returned his desperate head -a friar breeze that frozen him. It was symbu that, a advanced chest, as prepared to throw himself on the tape, accelerated and approached, approached. In a last effort, desperate, Petros, a large German, very strong, who had begun to sprint in the mouth of the tunnel, 400 meters from the arrival taking advantage of the fact that Simbu had clueless and remained straight instead of turning towards the stadium, he throws himself on the tape as who is thrown into the pool, a dive Painful and useless: Simbu, his almost bird chest, a keel, has advanced. 2h 59m 48s both. Three hundredths plus the German who, defeated, since the earth does not swallow him as he would surely want, try to swallow the tape that has been tangled in his body in its iron launch.
Simbu, 33, is a new name that joins the list of world champions in Tokyo. Bronze in the 2017 World Cup in London, the Tanzano, with a better mark of 2h 4m 38s achieved last December with his fourth place in Valencia, has not achieved victory in any of the majorsArrives from Arusha, where the shadow of the Kilimanjaro is trained at 2,400. It is the southern end of the fruitful rift valley in which they nourish, in Ethiopia, in Kenya, in Uganda also, the best fondistas in the world.
Third, already distanced in the stadium, was the Italian Iliass Aouani (2h 9m 53s).
