Rejuvenated Marcell Jacobs says he will fight to keep 100m title
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Marcell Jacobs celebrates winning the men's 100m final at the European Championships in June 2024.
PHOTO: REUTERS
PARIS – While Italy’s Marcell Jacobs has been largely quiet since shocking the field with his Olympic 100 metres victory in Tokyo, the 29-year-old said he is a different but better sprinter now than he has been in a while.
He has a new home in Jacksonville, Florida, and a new coach in Rana Reider. He left his long-time coach Paolo Camossi in September after two injury-plagued seasons.
“I am a completely different athlete from Tokyo, and the important thing is the work,” Jacobs said on July 31.
“I worked really hard the last year. I have no injuries. Last year I said the important thing for this year was no injury, stay healthy and win the Olympic Games.
“So we are healthy. Now the focus is winning the Olympic Games.”
He came out of seemingly nowhere to capture his country’s first-ever 100m gold in Tokyo in a European record 9.80 seconds, then completed the double by leading the 4x100m relay team to victory.
But he largely fell off the radar soon after that, and when conversations turned to the world’s fastest man, his name was rarely mentioned. He failed to even make the final at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.
In June, however, Jacobs won the European title and then clocked a respectable 9.92sec two weeks later for the world’s 13th-fastest time this season among a jam-packed 100m field. And on July 31 he was keen to declare he is back at the Olympics with a singular focus – to retain his title on Aug 4.
“I’m the Olympic champion. I want to win again,” Jacobs insisted. “I know what I can do. I won the 100m at the Olympic Games. I worked really hard to get here to win again.”
His post-Tokyo struggles were chronicled in the popular Netflix docuseries Sprint, with the cameras capturing a vulnerable side to Jacobs, who was also not entirely comfortable with his new-found fame. He believes the series was great for showing fans how unforgiving the life of an athlete can be.
“People don’t know how much work is behind the race,” he added. “It’s important people understand, it’s not easy, you push your body at the limits every day. So it’s normal if maybe you have some injury or some problems.
“What hurt me was that people didn’t understand that we are not robots, we are not machines. We are human.” REUTERS, AFP