article by Nicholas Pucci
Since pole vaulting was introduced in the Olympicsmeaning since the first edition of Athens 1896, the discipline has first known the absolute domination of the American championsable to win consecutively until the 1968 Mexico City Games, then that of the European auctioneerswho between Munich 1972 and Atlanta 1996 climbed to the top step of the podium with the German Wolfgang Nordwig, the two Poles Tadeusz Slusarski and Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz, the French Pierre Quinon and Jean Galfione, and the two representatives of the former USSR, Sergey Bubka and Maksim Tarasov, before that at the turn of the New Millennium the United States returned to dictate the law with Nick Hysong in Sydney 2000 and Timothy Mack in Athens 2004. Finally, in this Europe-America context, the a third wheel, Oceania, which at the 2008 Beijing Olympics offers not only an absolute first time, but also one of the most exciting competitions in the entire five-circle history.
In the absence of the outgoing champion, precisely Tim Mack, the other American Brad Walker is competing for the predictionreigning world champion in Osaka the year before and who ai Trials of selection has bypassed the bar set at 6.04 meters, the best measure of the year, and the French Romain Mesnilwho was second at the world championship event, as well as silver at the 2006 Gothenburg European Championships, beaten byIsraeli Aleksandr Averbukh, present at the Games and also included among the most accredited contenders for medals. They are not to be underestimated either the chances of Giuseppe Gibilisco29 year old from Syracuse, who was world champion in Paris in 2003 as well as climbed on the third step of the podium in Athens in 2004, although he later disappointed both at the 2005 Helsinki World Championships and at the Gothenburg European Championships the following year, jumping for a injury the world championship review in Osaka.
On August 20, at Beijing National Stadium, 13 athletes gain access to the final, and surprisingly among those excluded are three of the most awaited protagonists, Brad Walker, Romain Mesnil and Aleksandr Averbukh. The fight for the medal, two days later, is therefore open to a wide range of contenders, with Giuseppe Gibilisco who once again, unfortunately for the Italian hopefuls, has a counter-performance by failing the entry measure at 5.45 meters.
The 5.60 meters are, unexpectedly, a difficult obstacle to overcomeafter all athletes have cleared the required entry height of 5.65 meters in qualifying: only 26-year-old Australian Steve Hooker and Frenchman Jerome Clavier make it in the first round. The next measure is 5.70 meters, Clavier is immediately eliminated while five of them cross the bar; Hooker, for his part, self-confident, passes the measure, as well as the next one, 5.75 meters, imitated by the other finalists still in the race, namely the Russian Evgenij Lukjanenko, the Ukrainian Denys Jurcenko, the American Derek Miles and the other Russian Dmitry Starodubcev. Instead, the German Danny Ecker and the Russian Igor Pavlov tried, but three errors eliminated them from the game for the medals.
At 5.80 meters there are therefore five left. Yurchenko retires, accusing physical problems that do not allow him to continue the race. Despite this, the Ukrainian obviously remains in the running for the podium, hoping that the two jumpers who follow him in the provisional classification, Miles and Starodubcev, get the measurement wrong, and this is what happens, so much deserve the bronze medal with the jump to 5.70 meters which represents the lowest measure to get on the podium since Thierry Vigneron and Earl Bell succeeded in Los Angeles in 1984. Eight years later, in 2016, However, Yurcenko will be disqualified for violating the anti-doping rules: samples taken after the competition were tested again, and the intake of dehydrochlormethyltestosteronea prohibited substance that requires the revocation of bronze medal then awarded to Miles.
It remains Hooker and Lukjanenko to contend for gold. The Australian, always 5.80 meters, misses twice, while the Russian succeeds in the first race and takes the lead of the competition. Hooker has a bad time, remaining an attempt to override the measure, but find the energy to fly beyond the bar on the third attempt and get back in the running for the final victory. At 5.85 meters the two champions fail the first jump, repeating the error on the second attempt, but the class is not really water and both manage to climb over the quota in the third attempt. History also repeats itself 5.90 meterswhen the first two attempts are wrong, but this time solo Hooker (who has a personal 6.00m jumped in Perth in January) he makes it on his third effort, thus winning the gold medal.
The Australian would like to add the icing on the cake at this point, attacking the Olympic record at 5.96 metres. For the fourth time (after 5.80, 5.85 and 5.90) he makes a double mistake but then crosses the bar on the third attempt, achieving a feat never before achieved by anyone: winning a major international competition by going over the bar in the last four rounds of competition. If we think that he did the same in qualifying, at 5.65 metres… victory was never sweatier!
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