Solomon just misses out on 400m final but hes far from being left speechless

Here is the first sentence Steve Solomon spoke after running third in his semi-final of the men’s 400m at the Tokyo Olympic Games and falling just short of qualifying for the final.

“I wanted to make the final, I believed I could, I got the semi to do it, I thought I went out and executed well, I probably needed to go just a little bit harder into the top curve and not leave quite so much of a gap coming into the home straight, but I’m still very happy with coming into the competition for these Olympics with the prep that I did, to be back and in personal best shape, having a phenomenal championships as a team, which is tremendously rewarding, it’s the right momentum that our team needs, it’s our largest team at an overseas Olympics, it’s a very young team, and you know, when we set the expectation of performances of personal bests and season’s bests, then we’re going to have great results, and that’s very much the momentum that’s being built in the team at the moment and it gives me a lot of joy to see that from the guys.”

Steven Solomon.Credit:Getty

He ought to be puffed out. But it took Solomon longer to say that, with fewer breaths, than it had just taken him to run a lap of the Olympic Stadium. Those who have known Solomon at the Cranbrook School, at his synagogue in Sydney, or at Stanford and Duke Universities, won’t be surprised. He likes a chat. He’s a verbally gifted, precocious kid who can also, in Kipling’s words, fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds (or 45.15 seconds tonight) of distance run.

The confidence is even more appealing for the fact that Solomon just missed the final. You wouldn’t know it. (More Kipling: treating triumph and defeat as the same imposter.) You couldn’t last 10 years at the top level if you expected things to follow a smooth upwards progression. Solomon did make the final in the London Olympics as a 19-year-old, but then for Rio 2016 he didn’t even make the games. As he says, “athletics isn’t always straight and easy and smooth”.

It seems straighter, and easier, and smoother for the man who has just walked past Solomon in the area past the finish line. Kirani James, of Grenada, is in every way an alpha male of the track. The towering 2012 Olympic champion makes a point of congratulating every athlete he has just left gasping on the rubber. James’s 43.88 seconds has qualified him fastest for the final; there is a world in the 1.27 seconds between him and Solomon. When Solomon is recovering from his race by pouring bottle after bottle of water over himself, soaking up the atmosphere too like someone who knows how rare this experience is and doesn’t want to take it for granted, James cruises by, flashing hand-signs at his team, for all the world on his way to another gold medal. James’s path is made easier when South Africa’s Wayde Van Niekerk, who defeated him in Rio with a scarcely-believable world record of 43.03 seconds, hits the wall in heat 3 and fails to progress.

Kirani James was brilliant in the 400m semi-finals.Credit:Getty

But back to Solomon, who is living the dream and still seems not to have noticed that he did not make the final. “I felt tonight that I had this experience, a maturity in how I warmed up, how I composed myself, I think back to my semi-final in London and although I made it through there, I was a more composed athlete tonight.” The time, he says, “wasn’t quite there to repeat that”, but it seems immaterial.

An athlete like James seems to come from a grander, surer family than the slender-framed Solomon, but he hasn’t noticed that either.

“Those guys, I’ve got a bit to prove to get to the Kirani level. He’s won everything. When I’m next to them, I’m not fazed, I’m not standing next to them thinking [they’re] in the race and I’m going for second place. I really do feel confident that I can deliver the performances that I need to.”

He hasn’t delivered it this time, but don’t tell him. Solomon is still on a high after the 44.94 he ran in his first round on Sunday, which wouldn’t quite have made the final either, but it was a wonderfully brave personal best in searing heat. Solomon is still talking and showing little sign of caring.

“It’s just beautiful to be back at an Olympic Games. Rio was such a hard experience for me, coming back from hamstring surgery, every weekend for six months missing the qualifier by 0.04, 0.10, 0.11, 0.15. It was such a hard thing, but that experience gave gravity to what I’d done in London … Personal bests don’t come every week â€" I had to wait nine years for my personal best last night.”

So â€" to put it in a nutshell - how does the wisdom of Solomon summarise itself?

“Building my maturity as an athlete and a person. I say to my co-workers, redoing an Excel spreadsheet is easy compared to lining up in a championship with the biggest and fastest guys in the world.”

He can say that again.

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Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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