ROME ¨C Romans ran laps around Lamont Marcell Jacobs as he stretched his legs on the track. ¡°Ciao, champion,¡± said one speed walker. ¡°You make us old guys dream,¡± said one of the old guys.
Jacobs bobbed his head to the trap music pumping out of a portable speaker and sauntered up to the starting line. Then he took a calming breath, crouched and exploded, running faster than anyone on the track, anyone in Italy ¡ª almost anyone on Earth.
At the Tokyo Olympics, Jacobs, a little-known Italian when the Games began, stunned the sports world by winning gold in the men¡¯s 100-meter dash. In a nation where some populist politicians have courted support by demonizing Black migrants, the victory by the son of a Black American father and white Italian mother broadened the public imagination of what Italian athletes, and Italians, can look like.
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