Jake was very nervous as the opening took place, nor could his Jake's Emotion Control skill take away the excitement and pride he felt as he watched the opening of the Olympics that was held in his country.
Seeing this only increased the desire to win a gold medal in the marathon, Jake remembered seeing the opening of these Olympics on television, he thought it was very beautiful and just complained about taking too long.
But being in the stadium personally watching everything happening, he understood that it was a much more wonderful spectacle than watching it on television, the other athletes also seemed to be feeling the same emotion as him.
After a while, it was time for the parade of the countries to participate in these Olympics, as the host country the United States would be the last country to parade and so Jake would have to expect all over 10,000 athletes from 196 countries competing in 26 sports pass before your turn came.
Of course, probably not everyone was present at this opening ceremony, Jake personally would never think of missing such an event, when he paraded with the American athletes Jake felt much more proud.
After Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic cauldron and the opening ceremony was over, even if Jake could participate in other Olympics he could not forget that moment.
Then in the next few weeks, Jake followed the swimming and gymnastics events that he enjoyed most, and then also followed the events he knew the United States would win a medal.
Later when the athletic events started Jake never left Centennial Olympic Stadium where he had competitions where he was most interested and could learn many things as well.
Jake didn't even watch the television and just follow everything he could personally, he knew that the United States would be first in the medal table with 101 medals including 44 gold medals.
So the Olympics passed quickly, on the day of the accident Jake couldn't even sleep thinking he could have prevented this accident, as the system knew it was his fault that helped Jake erase that feeling from him.
Jake was a little afraid after learning that the system could only erase his memories and feelings at will but soon calmed down thinking that if the system wanted to do him any harm he didn't even have to give him a second chance to live.
Jake felt very good to see the American athletes and their idols from other countries winning the medals, he managed to gain some friendship from Amy Van Dyken and Isabell Werth from Germany.
They both found Jake very kind and charismatic when he said they were great athletes, Jake told Amy that she would win several medals at this Olympics and next after she won when he was watching she was quite happy about it.
For Isabell Werth, Jake said this was just the beginning and she would still be one of the great athletes in Germany and the world for the next 20 years, which made her happy after winning the medals.
Everyone liked compliments and Jake was speaking with sincerity and calm, not to mention that not many athletes respected them at these Olympics before Jake, in a few more years they would be recognized for being great athletes, but not yet.
So finally came the day when Jake would compete, it was the end of these Olympics and some athletes even left the Olympic Village at that point, Jake was happy that his mother and friends were watching and cheering for him.
The friends he made at this Olympics were also rooting for him, Amy would be happy that Jake won another medal for the United States and Isabell had no hope that the German athletes would win and was also rooting for Jake.
The marathon was on Sunday, August 4, 1996. The race started at 07.55 local times to avoid excessively hot and humid conditions, Jake didn't care much about the temperature or the weather.
After training for over a year and training over 3 months running 60 km a day just to be fully prepared Jake was not worried about anything else that day, he knew that only he himself could hinder the victory of this Olympics.
Many did not think so, but American commentators felt that Jake was certainly a favorite for this marathon, after all, he had three great results in the marathons he has completed so far.
It showed that if he was in good shape Jake could end up winning the marathon and winning the forty-fifth gold medal for his country, who knew Jake during the Olympics and his old friends knew that Jake was very confident of winning this marathon.
This was known as the most disputed marathon in the history of the Olympics, but that didn't make Jake afraid it was even better for him, for the first 30 kilometers he could keep up a slower pace and in the final kilometers leave everyone behind.
Jake was just worried about getting knocked out by other athletes, so he would have to run carefully so that didn't happen as in training he could run 60 km he was not afraid of not finishing the race.
At the beginning of the race, Jake did exactly what he planned, he managed to be much calmer after getting the Emotion Control skill that he used several times to calm down after he received.
At the 1996 Olympics he saw in his past life he knew that South Africa's Josia Thugwane had won and South Korea's Lee Bong-Ju was second, this time they would be second and third if Jake won.
In the first 10 km of the race, Jake was always in the top 20 and never in first, he kept a much lower running pace than he usually did so he was also getting tired much less than usual.
"I think Jake may be able to win this race for our country, he may be young at just 17, but he has already raced high in two major marathons and took first place in this year's qualifiers."
"I also think he is certainly a favorite to win, the problem is that as the sports media said he is very young and an Olympic competition has a lot more pressure than a normal race."
"Jake is really a young genius who besides competing for a marathon medal still plays basketball very well, he won the high school national basketball championship again this year."
"In addition to winning the championship he also won the MVP award in the two years, he also has a record of more than 20 consecutive triple-double games and in this year's national championship final game he made a quintuple double in the game to ensure the victory for your team."
"I think he should give up basketball and focus only on athletics, he's already one of the biggest marathon names in the world even though he's so young, but in basketball, he's just in the beginning, he has college before he even tried the NBA. "
"It looks like he doesn't think about giving up, he goes to the University of North Carolina basketball team, so clearly he went there to win titles."
"He's pretty smart having one of the best grades in the whole country, so I think he knows what he does."
NBC commentators, as well as the others, did not think that Jake could really win at this early marathon all athletes were less than 30 seconds away from the first place so everyone could win.
But after a few km of the marathon, some would start falling behind and others would open a good lead, so they thought Jake would be left behind after a few more km of competition.
They were commenting to the American public so it was normal for them to say that Jake who was the best runner in the country could win even thinking otherwise, not to mention that they had no recorded interviews with Jake unlike the other athletes because they thought that He could not win.
After 20 km of the race, many were still very close to the first place and some stayed behind just as the commentators thought, but Jake was still in the front and didn't even look tired in the race.
When everyone passed the 30 km marathon Jake was one of the first to realize why he had the system to show him the time, just as he planned he began to take advantage of the other runners ahead.
"See, this is the first time Jake has been in the lead since the start of the marathon, he seems to want to take advantage of the other runners, do you think this could be his racing strategy?"
"I think it's quite possible, he has been growing in experience and performance since the first marathon he won in Chicago, in New York he was much faster than in his first marathon and ended up hurting himself by straining himself, but in that year he was first with a good time in qualifying for the Olympics."
"Now that you have spoken he has a test time in Chicago of 2 hours and 9 minutes, in New York his time was 2 hours, 11 minutes and 45 seconds because he got injured and his time before that was for the world record."
"In this year's marathon he had a time of 2 hours and 8 minutes and 30 seconds and in this race, he seems to be much slower than he usually runs."
A marathon is a competition that takes more than 2 hours to complete, so commentators have to prepare a lot of interesting things to talk about beyond the race, so they end up saying a lot of things they don't even believe in just to get the audience excited.
So they said Jake was among the first to say that he could win even though he didn't really believe it could happen now they took advantage that Jake came first and started to take advantage to show that he could be planning this and going for the win himself who didn't believe it.
But after taking Jake's data from previous marathons they realized that this time they might be right, Jake was actually known for always taking advantage at the start of the race or after 30 kilometers of a marathon.
And he was really getting faster in the last marathons, so they really started to believe that this was Jake's strategy to be the winner of this marathon that was so balanced from the start after all the commentators were Americans too.
