Gianmarco Tamberi makes a lot of noise singing happy birthday to his daughter Camila right after winning his fourth European gold in high jump (2.32m), but despite his efforts, the night in Birmingham, Friday night, every night, belongs to the women, to the athletes with the most personality on the track, to Amy Hunt, the British sprinter who wins the 100m and 200m, to the Italian Nadia Battocletti, the queen of long-distance with her victories in the 5,000m and 10,000m (and the Spanish Idaira Prieto approaching her pace, fourth), and to the three goddesses of the 800m, Audrey Werro, Keely Hodgkinson, Femke Bol, who fight a battle for legend in the most desired final. The three best in the world at their best moment, face to face, knife to knife. Three greats and one above all, the Swiss from Fribourg Werro, Swiss father, Ivorian mother, 22 years old, pink shoes, claws in her pose for the cameras and winged feet on the track that flies diagonally from her start in lane nine, sprints to take the first place in the free lane and stays there until the end.
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European champion with a championship record time of 1m 54.81, a mark that would also have made her Olympic champion or world champion in all finals except Moscow 80 and Tokyo 25. The first major title of an athlete who lives with her parents and siblings, made in the family environment of a Swiss provincial club, and trained since childhood by a teacher named Christiane Berset Nuoffer who has progressed as her pupil has. And on the track, a cold breeze effectively fighting the day’s heat, only the tolling of Swiss cowbells sounds, which her fans love so much.
A month ago, Werro (pronounced veró, in the French way) ran in Paris in 1m 53.80s, the best time achieved in 43 years, since the hypertrophied world record of Jarmila Kratochvilova, 1m 53.28s. She achieved the record thanks to the persistent breath on her neck from Hodgkinson, the Olympic champion from Paris, 24 years old, English from Manchester trained by former athlete Jenny Meadows and her husband, Trevor Painter, a prodigy. They are two natural frontrunners. They only know how to run in front (Werro says it is due to clumsiness, because she does not know how to adapt her big stride, so high and strong for the standards of the distance, to marching in tight packs). And when they are ahead, no one passes them. Rudisha and other greats were solo frontrunners. Here, both are.
Behind them, Bol, the double world champion of 400m hurdles who arrives strong in unexplored territory with her base speed as a 400m runner. She waits for her chance in the final straight. She dreams that the two will exhaust themselves in their face-to-face effort and leave her the straight to fly. It was not so.
Hodgkinson insists behind Werro, who no longer stumbles and falls with her impressive cruising speed (56.5 in the 400m), as she did in the semifinals, and the Englishwoman presses her to the maximum in the killing zone, the back straight where everything is decided. Whoever spends too much there has no strength in the final straight. Werro resists and also in the curve, Hodgkinson’s last desperate change, who in the last straight sees, desperate, the victory escape right in front of her nose, well held by the claws of an almost teenage Swiss, owner of the future
