Olympic champion Jacobs wins on Rome return

ROME: Marcell Jacobs on Saturday won his first 100 metres race in Europe this year in the build-up to his Olympic title defence in Paris.

Italian Jacobs, who stunned the athletics world three years ago with two golds in the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games, clocked a time of 10.07 seconds to win his race at the ´Sprint Festival´ in Rome.

The 29-year-old finished 0.04sec ahead of Chituru Ali in a race against five of his countrymen at the low-key event, starting sluggishly before eventually surging through to win. “The race was OK, I´m having these errors at the start which are making me slower than I know I can be,” said Jacobs to Sky.

“If I´d managed to get my start going as I had during the warm-up it would have been a different race because the start is the basis from which you can reach your top speed. “I was missing that, but I´m very happy with the second part of the race.”