Houleye Ba looked once more across the huge Olympic Stadium, then disappeared into the catacombs.
That ended the Mauritanian’s second Olympic adventure, and it ended like the first.
Or rather almost: The slowest middle distance runner in Rio was the slowest sprinter in Tokyo this time.
Until 2008, the 100-meter runners from the "small nations" were allowed to compete directly in the first round and run against the top stars.
Since London 2012 they have been in a pre-qualification among themselves and first have to fight hard to be able to compete with a Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
For Regine Tugade-Watson from Guam, Amed Elna from the Comoros or of course Ba, the brave Japan travelers from the fringes of the big sports world, making it into the first round is almost impossible.
Ba finished last on Friday morning, her 15.26 seconds - around four and a half seconds slower than the best in the world - were listed as a personal best.
Probably also due to the lack of a comparative value.
Five years earlier, Ba had, remarkably enough, competed over 800 meters - two distances that are mutually exclusive unless an athlete gets along well with a heptathlete. At that time, however, Ba was allowed to compete with, or rather: behind the best in the world in the run-up to the finish line, 44 seconds after the eventual Olympic champion Caster Semenya. It will be interesting to see what Ba is thinking about for Paris in 2024. According to a certain logic, then it would be the marathon.