IIn honor of speed climbing, an event where races can take less than 5 seconds to complete, let’s finish this story real quick.
American Sam Watson won the rarest of Olympic distinctions on Thursday at the Le Bourget climbing site: He set a new world record without winning gold. Watson climbed to the top of a 15m wall with grabs in 4.74 seconds, but did so in the bronze medal race. In the semi-finals moments earlier, a small mistake cost Watson, when China’s Wu Peng rang the top buzzer first in 4.85 seconds to Watson’s 4.93 seconds. Indonesia’s Veddriq Leonardo beat Wu in a thrilling final, 4.75 seconds to Wu’s 4.77 seconds, to secure Indonesia’s first gold medal at the Paris Games.
See more information: The Inside Story of How Noah Lyles Got That Incredible 100 Million Win
Such is the unforgiving nature of speed climbing, which for the first time is a stand-alone event at the Olympic Games. Athletes compete against each other, rather than against the clock, in competitions that end in the blink of an eye.
Watson, 18, said afterwards that he made his mistake in the semi-final against Wu near the top of the wall. “Just a few millimeters out of control allowed me to extract less energy and slow down a lot,” Watson said.
Quite It’s quite relative here.
Watson is once again the fastest man in the sport – he set a world record of 4.75 seconds on Tuesday in the preliminary heats. And yet he didn’t make it to the podium. How is he dealing with conflicting realizations and emotions?
See more information: Omelets, air conditioning and embracing emotion: how Gabby Thomas won Olympic 200 meter gold
“I really don’t know,” Watson said. “I didn’t really go through that. I think all this kind of thing is external rather than internal. I have a vision of who I am and it doesn’t really change regardless of my performance. But other people will see me in certain ways and I hope that way is positive and a good representation of myself, my sport and my country.”
Watson didn’t show much joy immediately after breaking his own world record in the bronze medal race. Minutes later, however, Watson let the moment sink in. “I smiled,” he said. “To the organizers, a big thank you to them, I asked them to take a photo, Usain Bolt style, with the world record.”
Another scream, for a millisecond, to accelerate the climb. The races are often very, very close: Wu, for example, defeated Matteo Zurloni of Italy in the quarterfinals by 4.995 seconds to 4.997 seconds. The start of the quarterfinals, although the gold medal race lasted 20 minutes.
How fast can Watson go? “I really want to get under 4.6 seconds,” he said. “It really means a lot to me.”
Word recording: 4.74 seconds. Word count: 474. But alas, no gold medal for any of us.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
