For a few weeks now, athletics and FFL have not been a good match. While the pill is still hard to swallow, the French athletes have taken advantage of it to redouble our allergy towards this discipline. The latest disappointment? Sasha Zhoya.
As you can imagine, we’re not in the sanctity of athletics. After the terrible European Championships, which ended in a no less terrible second place in the medal rankings, how can I put it to you, we were not looking forward to the French Championships. And what followed proved us right.
The Sasha Zhoya show that we could have done without
It all started during the 110m hurdles semi-finals. Sasha Zhoya is one of the big favorites in this race, and for good reason, the young 22-year-old Frenchman represents great medal potential in this discipline. The start is given, and we expect Sasha to disgust everyone at the finish line. He’s going to do even worse than that.
At the start, the Frenchman has to deal with a starting block problem. The block runs away under his impulse, which seriously unbalances him. While Zhoya literally stops and raises his arm to ask for a recall, no one deigns to grant it to him. From then on, the 22-year-old athlete, who is relegated a few meters from his opponents, has only one mission in mind: to secure his place in the final by finishing in the top two of the race. Lol. Wait, what?
Hurdle by hurdle, Sasha Zhoya catches up, overtakes competitor by competitor, until finishing the race… in second position. The performance is huge, just like the affront that has just taken place before our eyes. In the jargon, we call it a Makenson Gletty. We also have a heartfelt thought for the other semi-finalists, who may be wondering if they have chosen the right specialty in athletics.
“I put my hand in the air like you’re supposed to, it didn’t show” Sasha Zhoya
For the record, Sasha Zhoya won the final and became French champion one month before the Olympic Games. All’s bad that ends badly.
