It was the first race of 2024, the first 100 that crowned him Olympic champion in Tokyo, but he hadn’t run for 230 days. Marcell Jacobs returned to experience the thrill of the queen test and he did it in Jacksonville, in the USA where he decided to move to regain momentum and make a change, after criticism and results between lights and shadows: on the campus of the University of North Florida, where he has been based since last October, the Italian Olympian stopped the clock at 10 ”11 in the first heat of the East Coast Relays, won by Trayvon Bromell, his training partner, followed in the stands by his wife Nicole and little Anthony and Meghan. Certainly not a long time, with the blue coming out of the blocks badly, but enough to break the ice of the Olympic season, with the Paris Games, the real objective (after the Europeans in Rome). In the Ville Lumiere next summer Jacobs has always said he wants to defend the title he won in Japan three years ago with all his might.
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The championships will be held in the capital from 7 to 12 June
“I’m very happy to be back competing – the words of Jacobs from the United States – and above all without problems. I needed to find these sensations again. We were all a bit surprised because the straight was reversed and we got a bit lost of time. The warm up was longer than usual. The start was a bit ‘no’ but in the second part of the race I felt really comfortable and it’s a starting point we can work on completely satisfied with the time, I thought I would run a little faster. But now head to the Miami rally and the Bahamas race to qualify the relay for the Olympics. Let’s continue like this.” Driven by a 0.9 tailwind, it was Jacobs’ first real test since joining coach Rana Reider’s group in Florida, almost eight months after his last 100m sprint last September in Zagreb. In the next few days the Fiamme Oro sprinter will join the group of Italian relay teams which will be busy on 4 and 5 May in Nassau (Bahamas) for the World Relays, the global qualifying event for the Paris Olympic Games. Upon returning to Italy, he will compete at the Roma Sprint Festival on May 18th on the track of the Stadio dei Marmi and ten days later, on May 28th, he will be on the blocks of the Golden Spike in Ostrava, in the Czech Republic. In the calendar of the European Championships in Rome there are two reference dates for Jacobs: the 100m final on June 8th, the 4x100m relay final on the 12th.
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