Belgium was outside the barriers. So Julianne Bomko agreed to run.

The must-see runner was in lane 2, and it was hard to miss: Julien Bomko of Belgium was a head taller than every other woman in heat two of the 100-meter hurdles.

Boumkwo competes regularly in track and field — shot put, hammer throw and discus — but on Saturday at the European Team Championships in Krakow, Poland, Belgium needed a hurdler. no barrier.

The two brought to the meet are injured, and if Belgium doesn’t send a runner to the starting line in the 100 hurdles, her team will be disqualified.

So when it became clear that there were no other candidates for intervention, Bomko volunteered.

“I thought there would be very little chance if I had to do that,” said Bomko, who learned she would be running the hurdles the day before the race. Once it became clear that she would be at the starting line, she said she tried not to think about it too much.

She said she told herself, “If I’m going to do this, I want to make the most of it and try to enjoy it.”

It appears that is exactly what I did. Pumko smiled and waved to the TV cameras as she identified with the other runners.

Shape was not her priority. That wasn’t the case, Bomko, 29, said in a phone interview Monday, though she recalled barrier techniques. On Friday, she had placed seventh in the shot put.

Bomko said she wasn’t nervous about racing. “It was beautiful,” she said. “She took my race very seriously,” adding that she “dealt with hurdle after hurdle.”

While she was very happy with the role for her team, she said she would stick to her own sport for the time being. She said, “I’m not a barrier maker.”

Belgium needs every point. Her team hoped to stay in the top tier of the European Team Championships, an event in which nations compete against their peers in three performance-based tournaments. A disqualification would likely mean a demotion for Belgium. Running, even if she finished last, meant two valuable points, which she knew could make the difference.

And so, one afternoon, Bomko becomes a hitch player. She took her time instead of jumping over each obstacle, then sprinting to the next. The rest of the field had already passed their second hurdle and lunged for the next when Bumko gingerly raised her foot over the first hurdle.

Her goal was to finish, to finish on her feet, no matter how long it took. The embarrassing fall probably wouldn’t have made a difference—she knew it would be her last—but the injury would have certainly made things worse. Carefully and calmly, she cleared every hurdle and crossed the finish line in 32.81 seconds.

The crowd cheered. Sweden’s Maja Maunsbach, a fellow runner, greeted Bomko after the finish line with a high five hands. Catarina Quiros of Portugal, who had run in the lane next to Bomko, extended her congratulatory hand.

Mönsbach, who was seventh, and Quiros, who was sixth, both finished fractions of a second behind the winner of the heat, Teresa Irandonia of Spain, who won in 13.22 seconds.

However, the story ending in Bumco and Belgium was not. Belgium finished 14th in the team standings, 6.5 points behind Greece – a gap too big for even Bumko to make up – and He was demoted to Division 2.

Pomco said the downgrade was disappointing but she was overwhelmed with love and support. “This was probably the best European Championship ever,” she said. “I got a very nice thing out of it.”