Fátima Diame reaches her destiny with a bronze in length at the World Athletics Championships | Sports

Athletic half of Spain, after enjoying it with Ana Peleteiro-Compaoré and her 14.75 meters of bronze to the rhythm of the Clash, Rock the Casbah, debate at coffee time in Glasgow, pints through, on the nightly 800, the winter consecration of Mariano García, his master’s degree, it is to be hoped, but Iván Pedroso has no time to waste.

The Cuban returns to the pit on the warm-up track because at seven o’clock another of his pupils jumps out, the Valencian Fátima Diame, a length specialist. Those who pass by and greet him praise Pedroso with, but you look like God, everything you touch flies, recognizing his personal touch in building the Peleteiro stronger than ever; François Beoringyan, the coach of the unhappy hurdler Asier Martínez, mutters, people don’t know what Pedroso is worth, everyone should get closer to him, and the wise men whisper, there could be a medal, there could be a medal. Only two, Tara Davis and Mona’e Nichols, jump more than Fatima, and if she doesn’t make many nulls, she’ll be there.

There is. A single null. A series growing up from 6.47m, 6.50m to 6.78m on the fifth attempt, and only a null. A bronze medal in which only she, her people in Guadalajara, a city to which she emigrated in September 2021 from Valencia, where she was born 27 years ago and where she trained under the command of another historic player, Rafa Blanquer, and with whom she achieved jump 6.81m, his best outdoor mark. “I believe that 70% of this medal belongs to my team. I have trusted a lot in Iván’s work system,” she says. “It is true that last year in Budapest, at the outdoor World Cup, it didn’t work out for me, but I already saw that I could be there. Iván told me, you are there, you are with them. You can win them, they are just like you. So we need that click and that would be it.”

Ahead of Diame, who with her best indoor jump reaches the destiny that her magnificent beginnings and her extraordinary potential promised her, the 24-year-old North American, joyful and super class, happy dancer, Tara Davis (7.07m) and her surprising compatriot Mona’e Nichols (6.85m).

Diame is introverted and quiet, and her head calms down, almost mysteriously, after the necessary hugs with Pedroso, with her people. She wraps herself in a Spanish flag and sits on the curve of the track, on the steep bank, while the pavilion remains silent: the final of the 60m hurdles is being run. “I was thinking when I was looking at the fences, thinking about the whole year, about everything we have achieved, about how happy she was, how happy she was. “It has been an accumulation of emotions,” she says, and for all that and more it gave her time in the 7.65s that it took the 29-year-old Bahamian Devynne Charlton to win the hurdles race, which reduced the world record that had been set by two hundredths. she herself owned. “And you already know that I don’t usually express myself much. So I sat down and started thinking. Damn, finally,” continues the story of the bronze Valencian. “Yesterday we were having dinner. There were four of us, Marta Pérez, Ana Peleteiro, Esther Guerrero and me, and Ana says, have you ever thought, dreamed that you were winning a medal? And Esther says, no, what’s going on. No way. And I, well, sometimes a flash has entered me. And tonight I dreamed that I won a medal. And it has been how, it cannot be. Ana is a witch, you know? She can’t be. And I don’t know, that came to mind. In the dream I didn’t know what metal I was carrying, but it had something.”

Journalists, schematic, direct, talk about destiny, as if the superior force that narrows the path really existed. The dream as a signal. Diame talks about work, because she is the one who leads the way. “I think I have worked a lot. I mean, I think it wasn’t destiny, because if it were destiny, I still would have been left out. I mean, she was seventh. Anyone could have passed me,” reflects the jumper, and affirms her personality. “I think the work we have been doing has already come out. And the Fatima that I myself expected and that everyone expected has come about.”