This time around, no one wanted to share the gold. Three years after Mutaz Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi decided to go 50-50 on first place in the men’s high jump at the Tokyo Games rather than jump-off for it, two of their competitors found themselves in the same situation but decided to work it out the old-fashioned way.
The USA’s Shelby McEwen and New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr were tied in first place after they had both failed three attempts to clear 2.38m. “You may recognise this situation,” the man working the stadium PA told the crowd, “what are they going to do this time?” Kerr and McEwen didn’t even stop to discuss it. The kumbaya spirit of the competition during the Covid years is long gone, and both men wanted to press on into the sudden death round.
It turned out to be a slow kind of sudden. Kerr and McEwen both have personal bests of 2.36m, but with the gold medal at stake they seemed to go to pieces. Neither got near to clearing 2.38m. So the officials dropped the bar down to 2.36m. Neither managed that either, so it came down again to 2.34m. The event had now run on so long that they were trying to squeeze their jumps in between the laps of the men’s 4x400m relay, which was the penultimate event on the track. McEwen decided to set off on his attempt at 2.34m even as the eight 400m runners were coming fast around the bend towards him.
McEwen missed it, which is not surprising in the circumstances. Kerr sensibly waited until the relay was over, cleared the height easily and immediately set off on a mad sprint across the turf to the middle of the stadium where he stood, arms wide, soaking up the applause of the 70,000 people in the crowd. Kerr, who is nicknamed the Flying Kiwi had proven himself the best jumper in the field, but you have to say by that point it was a pretty low bar. McEwen, who until tonight was best known for winning a trophy for a spectacular dunk from the free-throw line when he was playing high school basketball, won a silver medal to go next to it on his shelf.
Barshim, who already had a complete set of Olympic medals, won the bronze. Usually he can clear a height like 2.34m just by stepping out of bed in the morning, but he has been struggling with injuries this season and was well short of his best form. He ended up staking his chances of winning a second gold on a single attempt at 2.38m after he had failed twice at 2.36m, but the bet backfired on him.
His great mate Tamberi was out there too, and having an even harder time of it. He has had a hell of a fortnight here in Paris. It started to go wrong when he dropped his wedding ring into the Seine during the opening ceremony, a mistake which he managed to turn around with an irresistibly charming public apology to his wife. “If I really had to lose it, I couldn’t imagine a better place. It will remain forever in the riverbed of the City of Love,” he said. Tamberi speculated that it was an omen. If it was, it wasn’t a good one. A week later, he was struck down with kidney pain.
He spent the middle weekend of the Games in the emergency room at his local hospital, having CT scans, ultrasounds, and blood tests done. Three days later he was in bed with a 38.8 degree fever. He managed to make it through qualifying on Wednesday, but was in excruciating pain all Friday night, and hospitalised again on Saturday morning after he started throwing up blood. Even after all that, he made it to the Stade de France for 7pm and the start of the final.
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He didn’t win the medal he wanted. But you have rarely seen anyone do a more stylish job of failing. Tamberi came out onto the track cloaked in a hood, which he cast off before he spread his arms wide, slapped his chest, screamed and swung a couple of haymakers in the air. He failed his first two attempts at his opening height of 2.22m, so turned on his heels to face the crowd and led the entire stadium in a slow hand clap before his third. He made that one and was rewarded with a roar that was about as loud as any all night. He failed twice at his next height too, and this time geared himself up for his third attempt by dropping to his knees in prayer.
It didn’t do him any good, and moments later he broke down in tears, and was wrapped up in a consoling hug from his wife.