Olympic champion Jacobs gets season underway with 10.11 time / Photo: © AFP
Olympic champion Jacobs gets season underway with 10.11 time
Defending Olympic 100 meters champion Marcell Jacobs posted a time of 10.11 seconds to finish second in the East Coast Relays on Saturday in his first race in nearly eight months.
American Trayvon Bromell, a two-time 100m world championship bronze medalist, won the race in Jacksonville, Florida, with the same time as Italy's Jacobs.
The 29-year-old Jacobs, a surprise winner of Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, posted his time with 0.9 m/sec wind assistance.
Jacobs' last race took place at the Zagreb meeting in Croatia on September 10, 2023 and the Italian is looking to meet the entry standard for the Olympic Games of 10.0 seconds. He won in Tokyo with 9.80 seconds.
Jacobs is based in Jacksonville, Florida, where he is trained by American Rana Reider.
Bromell, Olympic 200m champion Andre De Grasse and Japanese sprinter Abdul Hakim Sani Brown are all training partners of Jacobs.
De Grasse ran a time of 10.16 while Sani Brown finished in 10.15 on Saturday.
Jacobs said last month that he will return to Italy "around May 18-20" ahead of this summer's Paris Games and will be based in Rieti, north of Rome.
Once back in Europe he will take part in a series of meetings, including in Ostrava on May 28 and either the Oslo or Stockholm Diamond League events (on May 30 and June 2), ahead of June's European Championships in Rome.
Jacobs also won gold in the 4x100m relay in Tokyo and after those surprise wins he was crowned world 60m champion and 100m European champion in 2022.
However he has struggled with a series of muscular problems and flopped at last year's worlds in Budapest where he was eliminated in the 100m semi-finals.
(W.Uljanov--DTZ)
Featured