By Şevket F. ERBAY from Stade de France
Another fully packed day at Stade de France saw an amazing night of athletics on the 6th of August. The day's story came from 23-year-old American Cole Hocker, who stuns three overwhelming favorites to steal Olympic gold in the metric mile final.
The race began very fast 54.9 lap led by Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the reigning Olympic champion from Tokyo. The tall Norwegian commanded the race in the lead for more than three laps but didn't calculate how the rivals would react for the final push. While the lead pack entered the final turn, Ingebrigtsen was the front runner, but just. Josh Kerr, the world champion, made an excellent kick in the final 200 metres and took the pole position with 60 metres to go. However, the inside lane attacker Cole Hocker accelerated amazingly to beat his Scottish rival in the final metres, clocking 3:27.65 Olympic record - and almost three seconds progress in his previous best mark!
The disappointed Josh Kerr added a silver to his Tokyo bronze but consolidated with a stunning one-second cut from the British record to 3:27.65. Yared Nuguse has completed the podium, which saw two United States representatives for the first time since the 1912 Games.
HISTORY MAKER MILTOS
The Greek treasure Miltiadis Tentoglou deserved to become a mythos after he secured his second Olympic gold in three years in the long jump. Tentoglou, 26, became only the second man to retain his long jump title in Olympic history after Carl Lewis.
Tentoglou was in second place right after the first round, but he climbed to the top position with his so-good 8.48 leap. He produced solid 8.24, 8.36, and 8.31 in the following rounds and claimed the victory after Jamaican Wayne Pinnock didn't go beyond his second-round effort of 8.36 metres. Pinnock joined James Beckford for being just the second Jamaican long jump Olympic medallist as Italian future star Mattia Furlani gets a delicious bronze in his teenage period.
Bahrain's Winfred Mutile Yavi stormed to the gold in the steeplechase as the Mid-East nation claimed its third-ever Olympic victory in athletics. Yavi chased the lead pack from the back before deciding to go up to clash with Peruth Chemutai, the defending champion from Uganda. Yavi clocked 8:52.76, the Olympic record, to secure gold just 0.58 ahead of Chemutai, who established the Ugandan record. In their several meters behind, 20-year-old Faith Cherotich ran 8:55.15, a personal best, to make the Olympic podium. Nothing with a medal but deserved big praise; France's European champion Alice Finot beat the 16-year-old European record with spectacular fashion, recording 8:58.67.
Canada was the other winning nation on the night with their world-titlist thrower Camryn Rogers. The relatively short (1.67 tall) Canadian led the hammer throw final in early stage before the American Annette Echikunwoke took first place. However, Rogers replied superbly in the fifth round by 76.97 and brought gold medal to Canada. It is the first athletics gold a Canadian female contestant took since Amsterdam 1928 - the first games women were allowed to compete in. Anita Wlodarczyk, a 38-year-old legend from Poland, contested her fifth consecutive Olympic final and missed the podium in just four centimetres.
