{"id":110092,"date":"2021-08-01T22:04:23","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T22:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=110092"},"modified":"2021-08-01T22:58:53","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T22:58:53","slug":"the-family-mystery-that-fuelled-an-olympic-upset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=110092","title":{"rendered":"The family mystery that fuelled an Olympic upset"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Olympic 100-metre champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs<\/a> was tired of being asked who his father was. He didn't know, and couldn't remember meeting him.<\/p>\n

He decided to find out.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, the Italian sprinter spoke to his father, who lives in Dallas, Texas, for the first time ever.<\/p>\n

Dad, whose name is Marcell Jacobs Sr., is getting to know who junior is now: Headline news everywhere as the fastest man in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

"I lived all my life without a dad," Jacobs said Sunday after stunning everyone to win gold in the 100 at the Tokyo Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Lamont<\/p>\n

"And when people asked me, who is your dad? (I said) 'I don't know. I don't know.' And then we tried to start to have a new relationship with him. For me, that was really important."<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old Jacobs revealed the endearing story soon after his victory at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. He was born in El Paso, Texas but his parents split when he was 6 months old. He went to Italy as a baby with his mother. His dad stayed in Texas.<\/p>\n

"I never saw my dad from that time," he said. "But I started to speak with him one year ago for the first time. This helped me arrive here with a good mentality."<\/p>\n

\"Jacobs<\/p>\n

His dad also sent him messages before the 100 final: "Yeah, he'll watch (the race)," Jacobs said. "He wrote to me before the race, (saying) 'you can do it, we are with you.'"<\/p>\n

Finding his dad and building a new relationship was part of Jacobs' pre-Olympics focus on his mental preparations and getting in the right mindset.<\/p>\n

Those made the difference, he said.<\/p>\n

"I really worked hard with my mind. Because when I was arriving in the really big moment, my legs didn't work so good," Jacobs said.<\/p>\n

"Now, my legs go really good when it's a big moment."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Olympic 100-metre champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs was tired of being asked who his father was. He didn't know, and couldn't remember meeting him. He […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110094,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110092\/revisions\/110094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}