A couple of days after speaking to Marcell Jacobs, a call comes through from a member of his team. Amid logistical discussions over where and when the reigning Olympic 100 metres champion might be available for some photos, she has a message that Jacobs is keen for her to relay.
“He wanted to thank you for asking the difficult questions,” she says, “and for giving him the opportunity to answer them.”
Those questions have never really ceased for the Italian, whose victory in Tokyo almost three years ago was one of the biggest Olympic athletics surprises of recent times. Initially, they centred on how a former long jumper could have risen so stratospherically that he claimed sprinting’s biggest crown only three months after breaking the 10-second barrier for the first time.
There was also an awkward association with a nutritionist implicated in a police investigation into the distribution of steroids but later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. And the unusual case of Jacobs’s subsequent conspicuous absence when he opted not to cash in on his overnight fame, as he dropped out of scheduled races and immediately ended his season after the Tokyo Games.
When Jacobs and I last spoke two years ago, he harboured an evident sense of indignation over what he described as “mud-slinging” against him.
Life has changed beyond comprehension since that unexpected August evening in the Japanese capital, but new queries have arisen. Why, when he decided to seek new pastures late last year, did he opt for Rana Reider, a coach currently serving a one-year probation for a relationship that “presented a power imbalance” with one of his female athletes?
What has happened in the intervening years to cause Jacobs to fail to make 100m finals at consecutive world championships? And, preparing to defend his Olympic title this summer, how concerned is he about his legacy? Is there a fear that he might forever be labelled a one-hit wonder?
For the past six months the forgotten man of global sprinting has lived a life of obscurity. Since moving his young family from their home in Rome to a vast luxury gated community in Jacksonville, Florida, last autumn, Italy’s star athlete has embraced his newfound anonymity. Only once has he been recognised away from the track, when he ventured to the local utility office to arrange for his electricity and water to be switched on and stumbled across a keen athletics fan.
He takes his children on the school run without eliciting a second glance, hones his golf skills on the course that backs on to his house and frequently unwinds by testing different guns at the local shooting range.
“I could go to the shop in my socks and nobody would recognise me, so I can do what I want,” says the invisible man with more than a million social media followers. “It’s a lot different to life in Italy, but it helps me stay emotionally calm.”
By the end of last season Jacobs, 29, had decided he needed a change: “New stimulation, new motivation.” The smattering of high points – world indoor and European titles in 2022 – were largely forgotten amid the disappointment of twice failing to make the World Championships 100m final. Only once since setting his 9.80-second European record to win Olympic gold has he run the distance in under 10 seconds.
With his name frequently disappearing from start lists as race day approached, he became known more for his absences than his performances. Questions resurfaced. The backlash hurt.
“People’s criticism really hit me hard,” he admits. “It came from everywhere – from Italy and abroad. As if I wasn’t competing because I was afraid. I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life. I wasn’t competing because I wasn’t able to. It was a difficult time because you train to get results and not getting them was hard. The two post-Olympic years were difficult years. I really needed something that would spark me.”
The underlying problem, he explains, was physical and “complicated”; an issue with his back and sciatic nerve that was tricky to diagnose and resolve. But he also realised that to stand any chance of retaining his Olympic title would require “radical change … not just physical but emotional, within myself”.
Upon leaving Paolo Camossi – Jacobs’s coach from his days as a moderately successful long jumper – he eschewed other options in Italy and instead relocated to a country that contains a complicated personal history.
Born in El Paso, Texas, to an American father and Italian mother, Jacobs moved to Italy aged six months and did not see his father for more than a dozen years until an awkward family reunion. Since returning to the country of his birth, he has spent time rekindling relationships with his father’s side of the family – many of whom live in Florida – but admits: “I’m a very circumspect person so it’s a bit difficult.” While his English has improved greatly alongside the fame and demands his Olympic triumph has brought, he conducts the majority of this interview through a translator after initially attempting to give the first few answers in his second language.
The driving force behind the Florida move was the opportunity to work with Reider, one of the world’s premier sprint coaches, but someone subject to an 18-month investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, which concluded in a one-year probation. Reider’s lawyer said his client had “acknowledged a consensual romantic relationship with an adult athlete, which presented a power imbalance”.
Jacobs explains: “I was really looking for a coach who didn’t have any qualms, hesitations or insecurities about training an Olympic champion. Obviously, I did check the situation before I signed on with him. I didn’t sign on to be his best friend. I signed on to work with him. But of course, I did make sure that all the accusations were concluded before I signed on with him.
“I feel completely happy with the choice I made. I repeat, I am here to train as hard as I can. I’m here for results and I feel at peace with the choice I’ve made.”
That decision has landed him in arguably the toughest male sprint training group anywhere in the world. Where Jacobs was head and shoulders above anyone else in Italy, now he works with the reigning Olympic 200m champion, Andre De Grasse, America’s double world 100m medallist Trayvon Bromell, the world 4x100m champion, Jerome Blake, a Canadian teammate of De Grasse, and the sub-10sec runner Abdul Hakim Sani Brown of Japan: five men with aspirations of making the Olympic 100m final and challenging the gold medal favourite, Noah Lyles.
In an event that creates prowling lions of its protagonists, surely the clash of egos is a recipe for disaster? “As soon as I started training with the group, the thing I wondered was why I’d been training by myself for such a long time. Training in the group is incredibly motivational. Right now, we’re a group that pushes each other on and supports each other. We are there for each other. Sure, we’ll be competing against each other. We’ll have to see what happens over the next few months but right now everybody is just training together. The companionship of training together is really meaningful to me.”
On the subject of his other troublesome professional relationship – with Italian nutritionist Giacomo Spazzini – Jacobs remains unyielding. In the immediate aftermath of the Tokyo 100m gold, Spazzini claimed credit for helping to turn Jacobs into an Olympic champion, only for it to emerge that he was implicated in a police investigation into the distribution of steroids. Spazzini was cleared in a criminal court, but reportedly handed a 15-year doping ban later rescinded on appeal. Jacobs was never suspected of any wrongdoing nor part of the police investigation.
At the time Jacobs insisted he had already cut ties with Spazzini as soon as the case emerged, and he now confirms he has had no contact with him since. Jacobs maintains he acted as quickly as he could, and believes the level of criticism and doubt levelled at him after his Tokyo triumph was only partly due to the association with Spazzini.
“I don’t think all the ugliness that came after the Olympics came from him specifically,” he says. “I think there was a lot of shock and discomfort with an Italian winning 100m gold. With hindsight, I wish I’d known about his issues before. But I didn’t. I wasn’t aware so there’s nothing much I can do about that. If I could go back, obviously I would have done things differently if I’d known. But I didn’t. You can’t change the past.”
There is an audible note of defiance in his voice; a sense of contempt for those who have sought to denounce or belittle his Olympic achievement. That number has only seemed to swell in his relatively fallow, troubled years since, but he insists his motivation to upset the odds again this summer in Paris is internal and does not stem from a desire to prove anything to others.
“Winning a second gold wouldn’t make that much of a change to me and my image,” says Jacobs, who is preparing to make his seasonal return in April. “Of course it would be positive, but coming from a country where no one before me had won an Olympic gold medal in the 100m, what I did was historic and it will always be historic.
“Over the years I’ve learned that I have to focus on what I want and what I believe I can do. Not to show others, but to show myself. A lot of things have happened in the two and a half years since I won gold, so I need to show myself what I can do.”
