Belgium had no more hurdlers. So a shot putter agreed to run.

The runner to watch was in lane 2 and she was hard to miss: Belgium’s Jolien Boumkwo was a head taller and heavier than any other woman in the second heat of the 100m hurdles.

Boumkwo regularly competes in athletics events – shot put, hammer throw and discus throw – but on Saturday at the European Team Championships in Krakow, Poland, Belgium needed a hurdler. Any hurdler.

The two it had brought to the race were injured and had Belgium not sent a runner to the start in the 100 hurdles, its team would have been disqualified.

So Boumkwo agreed to run. Kind of.

Boumkwo beamed and waved to the television cameras as she was introduced to the rest of the runners.

Form was not her priority. Neither was speed. “My team is the most important thing to me,” said 29-year-old Boumkwo, who finished seventh in the shot put on Friday.

She knew that Belgium needed every point. The team hoped to remain in the top division of the European Team Championships, an event in which countries compete against their relative peers in three competitions based on performance. Disqualification would most likely mean relegation for Belgium.

“I couldn’t let it happen that it lost by one point,” she told Agence France-Presse. “That’s why I considered participating.

“There was no risk for me if I took it easy.”

And so Boumkwo became a hurdler for one afternoon. Stepping instead of jumping over each obstacle, then jogging to the next, she took her time. The rest of the field had already passed their second hurdle and was sprinting to the next one when Boumkwo very carefully lifted her foot over the first.

Her goal was to finish, and to finish on her feet, no matter how long it took. An embarrassing fall probably wouldn’t have made a difference – she knew she was going to be last – but an injury certainly would have made things worse. Cautious and calm, she cleared all obstacles and crossed the finish line in 32.81 seconds.

The audience cheered in appreciation. A fellow runner, Maja Maunsbach from Sweden, greeted Boumkwo just beyond the line with a double-handed high five. Catarina Queiros from Portugal, who had run alongside Boumkwo in the track, extended a congratulations.

Both Maunsbach, who finished seventh, and Queiros, who finished sixth, had finished fractions of a second behind the heat’s winner, Teresa Errandonea of ​​Spain. who won in 13.22 seconds.

However, the end of the storybook for Boumkwo and Belgium was not to be. The team finished 14th in the team standings, 6.5 points behind Greece – a gap too wide for even Boumkwo to make up – and relegated to Division 2.