SAINT-DENIS, France (news agencies) — The ear-splitting roars raining down on the track and field stars in the Stade de France felt like eight years of pent-up energy flowing out at once.
They were for distance runner Joshua Cheptegei, who stamped his mark on a masterpiece of a 10,000-meter race to set an Olympic record and win a gold medal.
They were for Sha’Carri Richardson, who opened the meet in the afternoon Friday with a first-round 100-meter sprint that kept her own gold-medal dreams in tact.
They were for decathletes, who were showered throughout the afternoon and into the night as they worked their way through their first five events, garnering a show of support that’s “not too typical for decathlon,” Canada’s defending champion Damian Warner said.
They were even for swimming.
The start of one decathlon heat was delayed about five minutes while the public address announcer begged for quiet and fans waving the French tricolor chanted and cheered for Léon Marchand’s latest gold medal at the pool.
Cheptegei, who won in an Olympic-record time of 26 minutes, 43.14 seconds, loved every minute of it.
“It’s the most rewarding that I am winning today in Paris, the most amazing crowd,” he said. “The crowd was wild. And I knew that when I was going to the front, at the last two laps, I knew that this was going to be amazing for me.”
Three years ago in Tokyo, the COVID-19 pandemic kept crowds out of the mix, leaving most of the 2,200 track and field athletes to compete in eerie silence.
Cheptegei’s gold was the first won in front of a crowd on the track since the Games in Rio de Janeiro eight years ago. For that, he also got $50,000 and a chance to clang the bell at the end of the stadium, which is reserved for champions only.
The crowd went crazy for that, too.
“I think the 10K doesn’t get a lot of love sometimes,” said Grant Fisher, whose bronze medal marked America’s first podium appearance in this event since 2012. “But that crowd felt like we were the best show in town.”
From start to finish, the night’s biggest race was a barnburner.
It featured 15 runners who had broken 27 minutes in their careers, meaning the 27:01 Olympic record was in peril before the starting gun even went off.
Then, a trio of Ethiopians — Yomif Kejelcha, Selemon Barega and Berihu Aregawi — made it happen. They set a blistering pace early, stringing out the field and taking turns in the lead through 7,500 meters.
For a few laps after that, things got bunched up and the runners were racing three- and four-wide.
“I was surprised how many people were around given how fast the pace was,” Fisher said.
Then, it strung out again. Fisher, the 27-year-old American champion trying to join Billy Mills as the second U.S. 10,000-meter champion, stayed in that mix.
Out of nowhere, with 500 meters left, surged Cheptegei.
He was in the lead when the bell lap started, and he never gave anyone hope. Fisher lost a lung-searing sprint to Aregawi for second. Cheptegei gave Uganda its first gold medal in the 112-year history of the longest Olympic event on the track.
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