A performance which also adds to the third title of European outdoor champion won by Nafi in June at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. Here again, no one has done better in the history of the discipline…
But it is of course at the Stade de France that the most awarded athlete in history wanted above all to be present, the Euro only constituting a good test (in addition to ensuring her presence at the Olympic Games ) before the big summer meeting.
“I arrive here with the strength of my two past Olympic experiences and I really want to enjoy these Games”announced Nafi Thiam during his meeting with the press at the Olympic village of Saint-Denis. “In Rome, I felt good but not as good as now. It gives me confidence to see that without being at full strength, I achieved the third performance of my career. I think Paris is going to be really special! I I’ve worked hard, and I feel ready both physically and mentally.”
Her ten years at the highest level, however, have taught caution to our compatriot, who knows that she does not control all the parameters linked to the final result of the competition and therefore refuses to proclaim herself the big favorite for gold.
“The heptathlon is made up of seven events and as many possibilities to fail”she once recalled, while emphasizing the quality of the competition and the desire displayed by her opponents.
In Paris, it was the British Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the only heptathlete to have beaten the Belgian in a major championship since 2016 (it was in Doha during the 2019 Worlds), who quickly established herself as her main competitor for the title.
The 2023 world champion was 48 points ahead of Thiam after the first four events. A gap which would stabilize at the start of the second day after the length competition where our compatriot was injured by involuntarily hitting his knee with spikes!
Injured knee
Sewn up in the infirmary, Nafi then showed up with a bandage on her leg for the javelin throw but still managed a beautiful throw of 54.04 m to take control of the competition. A decisive moment. He still had to defend an advantage of 121 points, or eight seconds, in the 800m to win a third gold medal at the Olympics. Which she did, thanks to a new personal best (2.10.62), not without experiencing a big scare when she tripped after 200 meters of racing. An adventure given the greatness of his feat!
Totaling 6,880 points, the third score of her career, the Belgian could begin the celebrations in the company of Noor Vidts, the other Belgian heptathlete and bronze medalist. “This victory is that of courage”commented Nafi Thiam the next day, before going to collect his medal during the protocol ceremony. “The courage to have taken my career and my life in hand, to not have been afraid, to have trusted myself.”
In South Africa
A statement which refers to the important choices made by the person concerned, at the end of the 2021-2022 season, for the rest of her career: by changing coach, passing from her faithful trainer Roger Lespagnard to Michaël Van der Plaetsen, and by moving for a large part of the year to South Africa where she now trains in favorable climatic conditions, Nafi Thiam took a risk… calculated and paid off!
“I made these choices with the hope of being here and finishing this Paris competition with the gold medal but above all having no regrets. I have both, so it’s great! Great to get where we are after such a big change and with an ever-increasing level of pressure.”concludes the best Belgian athlete in history.
Aged 30, she does not rule out, today, participating a fourth time in the Olympic Games, in 2028, in Los Angeles.
