Jolien Boumkwo competed within the 100-meter hurdles on the European Athletics Team Championships, in Chorchow, Silesia, Poland, this weekend, answering her crew’s name for assist in securing two factors within the competitors.

Erik Van Leeuwen/BELGA MAG/AFP by way of Getty Images

cover caption

toggle caption

Erik Van Leeuwen/BELGA MAG/AFP by way of Getty Images

Jolien Boumkwo competed within the 100-meter hurdles on the European Athletics Team Championships, in Chorchow, Silesia, Poland, this weekend, answering her crew’s name for assist in securing two factors within the competitors.

Erik Van Leeuwen/BELGA MAG/AFP by way of Getty Images

When a prime Belgian hurdler could not race within the European Athletics Team Championships, her crew turned to its prime shot-putter. So Jolien Boumkwo gamely ran the ladies’s 100 meters hurdles, delivering two factors for her crew. She did all of it with a smile.

“I really love it,” Boumkwo said afterward, as movies of the towering athlete, gingerly bouncing her manner over every hurdle on Saturday, grew to become a sensation.

One day earlier, Boumkwo had completed seventh within the shot put, an occasion wherein she not too long ago broke her own national record. Normally, that will have been the top of her competitors on the championships in Poland.

But she was known as to responsibility on Saturday after Anne Zagré, the Belgian nationwide record-holder within the 100-meter hurdles, was compelled out with an harm. The nation’s Hanne Claes was additionally out. And with a Swiss hurdler disqualified in Heat A, it was as much as Boumkwo to grab two factors for Belgium.

“My team is the most important thing for me,” Boumkwo told Agence France-Presse, including, “I couldn’t let it happen to lose by one point.”

Boumkwo mentioned she instantly mentioned sure when her crew requested whether or not she may presumably run hurdles, and her coach agreed — so long as she did it fastidiously. After all, as Boumkwo informed Belgian public broadcaster Sporza, they often embody hurdles in her coaching.

Aside from the novelty of the occasion, Boumkwo mentioned, it was uncommon for her to really feel like everybody within the stadium had their eyes on her.

With good motive. In the footage, Boumkwo waved as she was launched, taking her spot within the blocks. There was no query of the place she would end: Although the shot-putter received by the race cleanly, her rivals have been already dealing with their third set of hurdles as she received over her first impediment.

At the end line, Boumkwo’s fellow racers greeted her with high-fives and handshakes. She set a season-best time of 32.81.

Her nationwide crew thanked her for her sacrifice, saying it was a part of athletics — “and that’s why we love it so much!”

If her two factors would possibly assist Belgium keep within the prime division, Boumkwo informed Sporza, it might be price it.

Despite Boumkwo’s heroics, Belgium faces relegation to Division 2 within the subsequent European Athletics Team Championships, having finished 14th out of 16 groups, simply behind Greece. In the biennial competitors, the underside three Division 1 groups are relegated and changed by the highest three Division 2 groups.

But that hasn’t stopped Belgium — and as of this week, legions of its monitor crew’s latest followers — from celebrating Boumkwo’s athleticism and her dedication to serving to her crew.