Athletics | Thomas Fafard in pain in the 5000m

(Saint-Denis) After placing second at the start of the last lap, Jakob Ingebrigsten swooped down on the poor Ethiopian Hagos Gebrhiwet, put into orbit by his compatriots Mehary and Yihune in the 5000m final, Saturday evening, at the Paris Olympic Games.

Having finished fourth in the 1500m, the Norwegian middle-distance phenomenon would not be fooled again. At the entrance to the last bend, the two-time reigning world champion deposed Gebrhiwet, author of the second performance in history this spring in Oslo, to sprint towards the second Olympic gold medal of his career after the 1500m in Tokyo.

As Ingebrigsten crossed the finish line with a comfortable lead, Thomas Fafard was in the same place where the Norwegian had attacked 30 seconds earlier. Alone in the world. His face grimacing. And his right ankle in pieces, the result of contact involving the Kenyan Jacob Krop (10^e), he will tell us later.

With his morale in his heels, the Quebecer passed one last time in front of the flag on which members of his family, probably his parents, had written his name in large black letters.

Fifteen seconds behind the penultimate competitor, Fafard went all the way to the finish line to stop the clock at 13 min 49.69, which is an eternity for someone who had achieved a personal best of 13 min 05 in May in Brussels, which eventually led him, against all expectations, to his first Games.

Twenty-second and last in this final, for which he had qualified in extremis by avoiding the fall of four competitors in the semi-final, Fafard went to sit on a chair to try to understand what had just hit him. He recounted his misadventure to the British rival who finished second to last, before getting up to head towards the interview area, his pride touched.

Ankle pain

Not all fairy tales end well. “I look back, I see that I’m last, we won’t tell each other about kibble, it sucks in the east…” admitted Fafard as he relaxed his right shoe, the shin grazed by a crampon strike.

Not the type to sugarcoat it, the DEP student in construction machinery mechanics first made headlines at the beginning of the year by lowering the Quebec record in his first attempt at the half-marathon. Excited by this first experience, he imagined his future on the road rather than on the track, despite obvious qualities in the 5000 m.

After his coup in Brussels, he confirmed his participation in the Olympic Games by taking second place in the 5000m at the Olympic Trials in Montreal, where his friend Jean-Simon Desgagnés, 13^e of the 3000m steeplechase in Paris, had set the table for him as a pacesetter. The same day, he had signed a two-year contract with an equipment supplier, a decisive turning point for the 25-year-old athlete.

The finale in the City of Lights was a bonus, and the rider from Repentigny attacked it as if he had nothing to lose, not leaving the top 10 during the first half of the race, which had been run at a comfortable pace until then. His imbalance in the opposite straight caused him to twist his ankle.

Thomas Fafard expects that “it will only be negative things that come out in the next 24 hours, because the race was a disaster.” “But all in all, it was an incredible experience [les Jeux olympiques]. »

Beyond his ankle, which was starting to swell, he worried that his poor performance would hurt his candidacy for invitations to major meetings.

“Yes, I made an Olympic final, but when you don’t deliver the goods, he moves on to the other one.”