“Mariano, the motorcycle!” TO Mariano Garcia, the new world champion in the 800-meter indoor track (1.46.20), likes to start the motorcycle before starting to run and that his neighbors or friends cheer him on while he goes around his peculiar Fuente del Álamo circuit. It is his gesture, his way of preparing to face hard training days and, this time in Belgrade, the best in the world.
The Murcian runner had already warned of his chances running a book semifinal. In the final he came out reserving gas to dispute the 800-meter World Cup gold with another athlete dressed in red, the man from Salamanca. Alvaro from Abovemore experienced and with a continental title by proclaiming himself European indoor champion in Glasgow 2019.
Master lesson
García offered a master class on how to run 8 straights and 8 banked turns, coming back with precise and timely changes of pace from last position to first place on the last lap. And from there he endured, showing his fang when he was attacked on the finish line by the Kenyan noah kibbet (second with 1.46.35), who runs with his legs, but seemed ready to catch the Spaniard with his arms.
Mariano García has just made history by proclaiming himself world champion in the 800 meter indoor track. Tremendous pic.twitter.com/QD5OoURfYi
– Miguel Muñoz Ortega (@miguelmunozort) March 19, 2022
De Arriba, who advanced to fourth position at the end, suffered from the effort of a complicated semifinal, although he was about to join García on the podium.
Despite a curriculum until yesterday empty of metals in high competition, Mariano Garcia’s gold not surprising given its progression. He arrived in the Serbian capital as the winter leader in distance, thanks to the victory with 1:45:12 at the Milrose Games in Staten Island. The Spaniard counted on all the forecasts to achieve a podium at least, especially after his exhibition in the semifinal of the previous day.
the dog in the corner
The most powerful weapon of the 25-year-old from Murcia is the ease with which he can change pace over a distance that is run on the free lane, with enough spark to overtake his rivals on every lap. The Fuente del Álamo runner says that when he was a boy, a dog that lived on the corner of his house forced him to sprint every day and that taught him to get out of any situation faster than usual.
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“I have remembered all the work that I have put into him in recent months. And I have said to myself, here to shoot until I die,” said García after his victory, hugging Álvaro de Arriba and remembering his bad luck when an appendicitis prevented him from choosing to the Tokyo Olympics.
García achieves the third gold medal for Spanish athletics in the indoor world championships, after Colomán Trabado’s in the same distance, the 800m, and Manolo Martínez’s in the shot put, breaking a streak of few victories that weighed down a estimable medal table of 38 metals on 17 occasions, 39 adding the gold of the Murcian athlete in Belgrade.