Olympics: Tolentino and Hoffman Stumbles in 2024 Paris Heats, Relegated to Repechage Vindication
John Cabang Tolentino and Lauren Hoffman participated in their respective events on August 4 on Sunday, inside the Stade de France.
Cabang Tolentino placed 6th in the men’s 110-meter hurdles with a time of 13.66 seconds in his heat.
The top three per heat automatically move on to the next round which means his registered time was unfortunately not enough.
After the conclusion of the second heat, The 22-year-old is virtually eliminated from the medal rounds as he was only 12th overall amongst all participants after review.
Only 15 athletes advance directly to the semifinals from the preliminary heats, while the three fastest remaining competitors who did not finish in the top three round out the total of eighteen participants.
The Spain-based athlete will now be relegated to hurdles 110m repechage.
Next was Lauren Hoffman who started well but unfortunately was unable to keep up with her competitors throughout in the women’s 400m hurdles. The gap though was too large which rendered her to finish dead last in her heat with 57.84 seconds.
She finished 37th overall out of 40 representatives.
In her heat, Team USA’s representative, Anna Cockrell led the way with 53.91 seconds, Lina Nielsen of Great Britain came next with 54.65 and Jamaican hurdler in Janieve Russell rounded off the top three with a 54.67 time.
The Duke University product will get a chance in the repechage to hopefully have an outcome that will lead her to the semifinals as she needs to finish with a top-two finish. It is the same daunting task as well for Cabang Tolentino who is in the situation as well.
It is the first time since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics that the Philippines have sent three track and field athletes with EJ Obiena rounding off the troika.
