Yulimar Rojas prepares to revalidate world title under roof

The appointment in Birmingham, in March, and the Diamod League, starting in May, are the biggest challenges in 2018 of the Venezuelan triple jumper

Yulimar Rojas has a purpose in mind this year. It is not about winning the Diamod League, which already shone during 2017 and which will compete again from May in search of a crown that narrowly escaped him. It is about revalidating his title in the triple jump of the World Indoor Championship.

For the appointment in Birmingham, which will be from March 1 to 4, is being prepared since October of last year.

"When I finish a goal right away I think of another and now I'm focused on revalidating my indoor world title in Birmingham," he warned in August, when he came to Venezuela to celebrate the gold medal he won at the World Athletics Championships in London.

The road to success for Rojas, a 22-year-old from Caracas who was raised in Anzoátegui, began in the Portland Indoor World Cup in 2016.

He followed the silver medal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and his consecration came in 2017, when he finally managed to beat Colombian queen Caterine Ibargüen at the London event to give Venezuela its first gold in World Athletics. The test was also the last of the Jamaican star Usain Bolt.

A cramp in the left hamstring caused, on August 12, a painful goodbye to the biggest, Usain Bolt, who, with a modest bronze in the bag said goodbye to the Olympic stadium in London to enter the territory of the legend.

Goodbye to the king. Rolling the track on the straight during the 4x100 World Cup final. In that fatal way the glorious orbit of the Jamaican star expired, which in the last nine years, since its explosion with the Olympic triplet in Beijing 2008, carried almost all the weight of athletics on his back.

In a straight line, Bolt stumbled and collapsed between gestures of pain. An unexpected goodbye for perhaps the greatest athlete of all time, who crossed the finish line accompanied by his three relay teammates in the most dramatic scene of the World Cup.

11 times world champion and 8 olympic, Bolt leaves the king of sports orphan. The president of the IAAF, Sebastian Coe, consoles himself thinking that the planet will continue to revolve after Bolt, but rarely a topic is so adjusted to reality: the gap it leaves is gigantic, it will take time to be filled.

When the media dictatorship of soccer intensifies, Bolt has illustrated thousands of covers in mass media of the whole world with spectacular poses, choreographic numbers, his enormous body thrown at full speed towards the goal by the central streets, a few meters in front of everyone else.

The fans continued with their hearts in their hands, overwhelmed by emotion and aware of attending a historic event, the last race of the man who always wanted to be a sports legend and worked very hard, shattering his back, to become a myth.

His career -11 gold medals and 15 in total in World Cups, 8 (all gold) in Olympic Games, after losing the relay 4x100 Beijing 2008 for doping by his teammate Nesta Carter- was extinguished that Saturday August 12 in the same stadium that 5 years ago had been the scene of his second Olympic exhibition.

The London 2017 World Cups will go down in history especially for this goodbye.

Since 2008 nobody could defeat him in big championships, whether World Cup or Olympic Games, until that fateful day. Bolt only let out a gold medal, the 100 meters in Daegu 2011, but for his premature departure, which cost him the disqualification.

Bad year for people like the British Mo Farah, king of the fund that is already going to the marathon; the South African Wayde Van Niekerk, the most complete of the world in the combination 100-200-400, or the Russian Maria Lasitskene, who pursues the world record of height. His successes received less space in the media, Bolt occupied almost everything.

The eclipse of the Sun King was taken advantage of by Mutaz Essah Barshim, Qatar skydiver, to take the trophy for the best world athlete of the year, along with the Belgian heptathlete Nafissatou Thiam, both champions in London. Second on the all-time list with a jump of 2.43 (two centimeters from the world record of Cuban Javier Sotomayor), Barshim remained undefeated throughout the season, won the world title in London and won the Diamond League in his discipline.

The Qatari, the first high jumper to win this annual IAAF award, was competing with Mo Farah, who won his sixth world gold medal (10,000) in London and says goodbye to the track to focus on the asphalt, and with Wayde van Niekerk, world record holder of 400 meters, in addition to world and Olympic champion, who convalesces from a knee injury that occurred playing rugby.

Thiam, in addition to obtaining the heptathlon world title, broke the 7,000 point barrier (7,013) at the Götzis meeting (Austria), one year after winning the Olympic gold in Rio.

The triumphs of the Colombian Eider Arévalo in 20 km march and the Venezuelan Rojas in triple put the Latin American accent in the London World Championships, the last competition of the Spanish Ruth Beitia, current Olympic champion of height, who retires with 38 years of age.

Deceptions and surprises. London registered a rosary of fiascos: Elaine Thompson, double Olympic champion in Rio and here only fifth in the 100; Shaunae Miller, gold in the 400 of Rio and in London fourth; the irruption of the Frenchman Pierre-Ambroise in 800; the young Norwegian Karsten Warholm in 400 m hurdles, relegating the Olympic champion, Kerron Clement, to third place; Sixth place for Ryan Crouser in weight.

But no surprise like the 200. The triumph of Ramil Guliyev (20.09) in Bolt's favorite test surprised everyone except the Spanish sprinter Angel David Rodriguez, who had opted for Turkish-Azerbaijani, an athlete who came to London outside the world top-10 of the year and went as champion.

"Eye with Guliyev: 20.08 in May, at 12 degrees and easy," Spanish had warned. When the mass of fans was preparing to watch an exciting duel between Wayde Van Niekerk and the botsuanés Isaac Makwala (the fastest of the year, at 19.77 in Madrid), Guliyev emerged to win the best part of the booty.

"It's not a shock, but it certainly does not seem real," admitted Guliyev himself. One thousandth was Van Niekerk, hero of Rio 2016 with his world record of 400 (43.03), of losing even the silver medal, such was the courage with which the Trinidadian Jereem Richards reached the finish line, with whom he shared a mark of 20.11 .