25th July 2013 06:32
The tall, slick Perini was the poster boy of the Italian team, the hosts' big hope for a second gold medal following Ottavio Cestonaro's triple jump triumph the previous evening. Locally-trained, he'd broken the national junior record on this track in June and arrived at the championships with a season's best a full tenth of a second faster than anyone else in the field.
At the pre-championships press conference Perini had been full of confidence, shrugging off talk of nerves. And he'd run fearless too. As if to prove his gold medal credentials, and his unfazed attitude to home-town pressure, he had opened up his campaign with a blistering championships record of 13.32 to win his round one race in the fizzing heat of Friday morning.
Not surprisingly, then, the hopeful home crowd had come to see something special. They got their wish, but it wasn't Perini who drew gasps from the stunned onlookers; it was the man in the lane next to him.
Wilhem Belocian had ranked second to Perini on paper before the championships started, but the Frenchman had moved through the two preliminaries to the final in a rather understated, almost unnoticed fashion, winning his heat in 13.61 and running a relatively conservative 13.56 second to Perini in his semi-final on Friday afternoon when Switzerland's Brahian Peí±a emerged as the Italian's most likely challenger.
But Belocian had been biding his time, and when the moment came he performed superbly, producing an almost faultless display of sprint hurdling that left his opponents, Perini included, straining in his wake. Belocian got a great start (with a reaction time of 0.138) and reached the first hurdle a fraction ahead, then skimmed smoothly and effortlessly over the next nine, not touching a single barrier before bursting through the line in 13.18.
It was not only well inside his previous best, and considerably quicker than Perini's day-old championships record, but took 0.04s from the European junior record set by Poland's Artur Noga at the 2006 World Juniors in Beijing. Belocian – nicknamed 'Belo' – bellowed his approval on seeing the figures, pointing his left index finger at the finish clock as he roared his delight.
Perini had been blown away by the brilliant 18-year-old. Not that the Italian ran badly. Far from it, for he sliced his own national junior record down again to 13.30 to take silver, while there was a Swiss junior record for Peí±a in third.
'I just ran better than the others,' said Belocian afterwards. 'Better than the Italian and the Swiss. I also broke the European record which is awesome.'
Indeed, it was. Not that the performance should have come as a complete surprise. Belocian describes himself as 'a championships man', and he has the form to back it up having won bronze medals at the 2011 World Youth and 2012 World Junior Championships, finishing as top European on both occasions.
He has quick times to his name too. In the Barcelona semi-final he dethroned Samuel Coco-Viloin as the French junior record holder, clocking 13.30, and then sliced another hundredth off in the final. Earlier in 2012 he unseated former world champion Ladji Dacouré as France's best ever under 18-year-old when he ran a world youth best of 13.12 over the lower-set hurdles. Dacouré's record had lasted since 1999.
He carried on in similar vein at the start of 2013, running 7.64 to break the European junior indoor record over 60m hurdles in Lyon this March.
But his preparations for Rieti had been far from perfect. In fact, the man from Guadaloupe raced only twice outdoors before the championships, and not at all since early May. Indeed, the first of those races was back on 1 April when he won the Carifta Games in 13.49. His best since then had been 13.85.
No wonder no-one was looking at lane five. Not that Belocian cared about that. He was quite happy for all the attention to be on his rival.
'I never thought about the Italian and his record,' said Belocian. 'I do not know if my race was perfect. All I know is that it brought me victory.
'It was not so easy at the end,' he added. 'It was a little more laborious, I felt like I was digging. But I had more rage and desire to win.'
It may not have felt easy, but it certainly looked it thanks to his sublime technique. Indeed, the French team's technical adviser Ketty Cham said, simply: 'It was perfection.'
'There is nothing to say,' said Cham. 'He knew why he was there; he ran without asking any questions. The Italian's presence was nothing to him.'
If he can escape injuries, Cham added, there's 'no limit' to how far 'Belo' can go in the sport. 'He's not in the big leagues yet, the seniors,' said Cham, 'but he can raise the bar as high as possible.'
As for Belocian, he was as surprised as the crowd by his time, the only European junior record set over the four days of the championships.
'Bluntly,' he said, 'I did not expect that.
'At the same time, I trained all season for this. Behind me, there is a lot of work since last October.
'In the World [Junior] Championships I was in my first year as a junior so I didn't expect a medal. I worked on my technique a lot with my coach and winning here was my objective for this year.
'Now I'm so happy. Now, I'm going on vacation.'