PARIS — When Marco Arop said he doesn’t feel like the favourite for Olympic gold, he wasn’t suffering through a crisis of confidence.
The man knows the 800 metres inside-out, how it can turn on a misstep or failed strategy and that every international field is chock full of cutthroat contenders.
He also is just naturally humble, not given to flashing his world championship gold medal around.
“To be honest, I can make a narrative in my head for both,” he said during an interview in Edmonton in early June. “If I’m the favourite, I’ve got to run fast. I’ve got a target on my back. You know, it’s more incentive to win. And if I’m the underdog, then I have to prove that I can win these races.
“It’s interesting because, even being the world champion, I still don’t feel like I’m the favourite. There’s a couple of guys out there that I know will give me a challenge any race that I compete in.”
Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati and Kenyans Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Wyclife Kinyamal are those guys.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
“And I know if I don’t bring my ‘A’ game, those guys are going to be right there. So I think whether I’m the underdog or the favourite, I’m going to go in hungry and ready to win.”
Arop finished second in his heat at Stade de France on Wednesday morning. Sedjati and Wanyonyi both won theirs, while Kinyamal finished third in his and all four qualified for Friday’s semifinals in typically pedestrian early round times ranging from 1:44.64 for Wanyonyi to 1:45.74 for Arop and 1:45.84 for Sedjati. They all will be moving quicker than that in the semifinals.
Arop didn’t speak to media after the race, so we can only imagine how he was feeling about his strategy and performance. But back in June, he and his Edmonton-based coach Ron Thompson talked tactics at length.
“I think he has always been competitive, highly competitive,” Thompson said. “But experience does teach us wisdom. And so he has learned to gauge how to run in different circumstances. As you probably recognize, he used to front run all the time. And we said, well, that’s not going to work all the time. They’re going to eat you alive. Because they’re going to pace off you and use you as a rabbit. And so you got to learn to diversify your strategy so that you can, as he’s doing now, stay at the back or wait for his time to make the strike.
“So I think he has changed through experience.”
Arop ran mid-pack for much of the heat on Wednesday and had plenty of gas left at the end, but didn’t expend it to get over the line first. The top three moved on.
“It just comes down to picking and choosing on the day of, which is the best tactic to use,” Arop said in June. “Because when everybody’s capable of running 1:43 or faster, it just comes down to who’s going to run the smartest race, who’s going to run the least amount of distance, have the least amount of wind resistance, or just that sort of thing. And I think my advantage is being able to run so many different ways.
“It’s a little bit unpredictable what I’m going to go out and do. And I think that’s something I can use to my advantage. The 800m is really interesting because it’s the fastest race where everyone is in one lane. So things can get pretty dicey. If you make one mistake, that’s it. Your race is probably over.”
So he goes in with an open mind and open eyes, taking the temperature of the race, as Thompson likes to say. If somebody goes out hot, he might just let that happen. If nobody wants to set a decent pace, he might take the point.
“The biggest thing is staying out of trouble,” Arop said. “You don’t want to be spiked up. If you can have a healthy or clean race, it’s usually going to go pretty well.”
Things went very well for Arop at the 2023 worlds in Budapest, where he edged out Wanyonyi by .29 seconds, while Sedjati was DQ’d and Kinyamal did not run.
Things have largely stayed the same since. Arop still lives and trains most often in Starkville, Miss., with coach Chris Woods. He also works with Thompson in Edmonton.
His coaches and an integrated support team, which includes a massage therapist, physiotherapist, strength coach and nutritionist, have helped deliver a healthy, happy Arop to Paris, where he will do all he can to add Olympic champion to his list of accomplishments.
If it happens, he still will be the same humble athlete. He always has rolled that way, whether excelling in high school basketball or dipping his toe into the 400m before realizing he would have more success as a two-lap man.
“I think the 800m chose me. It’s a cliché to say, but I never really thought that I was going to be great at any event,” he said in typical self-deprecating style.
Thompson had some influence on Arop’s decision to move to the 800m and the progression was immediate, has been consistent and has afforded him a sustainable career.
World champs have no trouble getting a lane in Diamond League meets and that has been a welcome development.
He also retained a representative agency and they handle his international logistics. He has gone from losing money as a young athlete to earning money as a world champ. While his financial situation has changed, he has not.
“I think I take everything as a learning experience and just try to remain humble,” he said. “Hopefully, I don’t ever get to the point where I stop learning or stop being the person that I am. So that’s just the way I see it. I think everything in the sport is teaching me something.”