MADRID, 22 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Spanish athletics did not have a positive day this Thursday at the World Championships that are taking place in Eugene (United States) after neither Adel Mechaal, in the 5,000 m, Mariano García and Álvaro de Arriba, in the 800, Manu Quijera , in javelin, and Pablo Torrijos, in triple jump, went on to their respective finals.
Mechaal had before him the tough challenge of trying to overcome the series of 5,000. The long-distance runner, who tested positive for coronavirus before the appointment and who could not run the 1,500, looked for his options, but finally fell apart in the final laps and stayed away.
His race was at a high level and although there were hopes of having the seventh best mark of the participants (13:06.02), the Catalan had no options. He sought to be in the lead from the start and even held on when the Africans picked up the pace to move into third place with four laps to go. However, despite his efforts, he ended up losing positions with one lap to go and could only be eleventh with 13: 36.48 and out of the final.
“At the beginning I felt very well, I had rested for this day and in the first 3,000 I was very comfortable although the pace was quite calm. From the last 1,000 I was in the lead and when the favorites changed, I tried to go, but I didn’t I was getting oxygen and I saw that I couldn’t, my legs weighed five kilos more each,” Mechaal said in statements provided by the RFEA.
There was also no luck in the 800 with the options of Mariano García and Álvaro de Arriba who could not enter the fight for the medals. The Murcian, indoor distance world champion, made a mistake in his tactics at the end and was sixth in his series with 1:46.70, while the man from Salamanca was seventh in his with 1:46.30, being nineteenth and fifteenth in the world respectively.
“I have seen myself well placed in the absence of a lap and when I have seen that the rhythm was ‘asleep’, I have pushed forward excessively and with the wind against me. I have collapsed and they have passed me like ‘planes'”, Garcia lamented. “I found myself a bit stuck after the tough series I had on Wednesday because those types of races leave me very ‘touched’. I started at 1:46:30, which is not bad, but a World Cup semi-final has to be at 200 by 100 and that ‘spark’ that is needed in these championships has been lacking a bit”, remarked De Arriba.
Finally, the competitions were equally elusive for Spanish interests. In the javelin, debutant Manu Quijera had a difficult time, but he also didn’t have his best day and could only throw 78.61 meters, far from his 83.28 this year, to finish seventeenth in qualifying that closed at 80.03 meters. In the triple jump, Pablo Torrijos from Alicante did not make the cut either with only a better valid jump than a valid jump of 16.32 meters could make, far from the cut for the final (16.68).