PARIS – There are places that are out there in the Pacific Ocean, and then there is Tuvalu, which is halfway between Hawaii and Australia, a collection of three reef islands and six atolls. All in, maybe 11,000 or so people call Tuvalu home. That makes it the second-least populous country on Planet Earth, behind Vatican City, and the least populous country where English is an official language.

If you put the reefs and the atolls together, you have a land mass of 10 square miles. For comparison, San Francisco is, rounding off here, 47 square miles.

Tuvalu sent two athletes to these Paris Games, both in track and field, and when one of them, 20-year-old Temalini Manatoa, settled into the blocks Friday morning in her heat of the women’s 100 meters, she was shaking from adrenaline and excitement and, if we are being honest, fear. She was scared. She said so. It’s big out there on that track for a young woman from a very small place.

“I’m doing my best,” she said afterward, finishing in 14.04 seconds, a personal best.