Steeplechasers are accustomed to obstacles. Over the course of three,000 meters, they have to clear 28 waist-high obstacles and 7 water pits. On Monday evening, although, in the early phases of the males’s last, they discovered themselves contending with a distinct form of impediment: a cameraman who had wandered onto the track.
The 15 males in the subject efficiently swerved round the cameraman, who had his again turned to them whereas he filmed the girls’s triple leap close by. But he flirted with catastrophe.
“I was a little worried that he was going to dart one way or another, right at the last second,” Evan Jager of the U.S. mentioned, “but thankfully he didn’t realize we were there until we all passed him.”
The race itself was unusually sluggish till the final lap, when Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco, the reigning Olympic champion, rocketed out of the last water pit to win his first world championship in 8 minutes 25.13 seconds. Lamecha Girma of Ethiopia was second and Conseslus Kipruto of Kenya completed third.
Jager, who gained the silver medal at the 2016 Olympics and the bronze at the 2017 world championships, completed sixth in 8:29.08. After a number of injury-plagued years, he had returned this season with hopes of touchdown on the podium once more however got here away disillusioned along with his outcome.
“It’s been a long journey,” he mentioned. “After I have a few hours to kind of let the emotions wear off, I’ll be very proud of myself. But pretty disappointed right now.”
