It wasn't just the winning that mattered to Renaud Lavillenie, but the way he felt the Brazilian crowd contributed to him losing, the Frenchman originally comparing his hostile treatment in last night's pole vault final as something similar to what Jesse Owens received off Nazi Germany at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
Brazil's hometown boy Thiago Braz da Silva broke the six metre barrier for the first time in a shock result that saw him win the gold medal with an Olympic record height of 6.03 metres, upsetting defending champion Lavillenie, who had to settle for silver – in more ways than one.
The Olympic Stadium, no more than half full to begin with, and near empty by the time the competition concluded after three hours, was clearly in favour of Da Silva. The 22 year-old was wildly celebrated after each of his attempts, while Lavillenie was frequently jeered, including before his run-up – hardly ideal in an event which does require such intense levels of concentration.
Indeed it’s more normal for athletics audiences to demand a hush of themselves as the pole vaulters take their final run-up, unlike the high jump, where the competitors sometimes incite the crowd to join them in a slow hand clap.
After Da Silva eventually won out, Lavillenie failing at his last height in a final bid for gold (his best height being 5.98), the small section of the crowd remaining around the pole vault area continued to celebrate wildly; Lavillenie, meanwhile, simply stood stone-faced and silent in front of his coach. He quite clearly declined to join Da Silva in the victory lap celebration, who set off instead with the American Sam Kendricks, who was delighted to have won bronze with 5.85.
Lavillenie does have a best of 6.16 metres, but was unable to come close on the night, and in the immediate aftermath put at least part of his poor performance down to the reaction of the home crowd in Rio.
“For the Olympics it is not a good image,” he said. “I did nothing to the Brazilians. There was no fair play from the public. It is for football, not track and field.
“In 1936 the crowd was against Jesse Owens. We’ve not see this since. We have to deal with it.
“It is the first time I saw this kind of crowd, I have competed in many, many competitions, in many, many countries and it is the first time everyone is against not only me, but all the pole vaulters apart from the Brazilian.
“There is no respect, there is no fair play. If we have no respect in the Olympics, where can we have have it?
“I am very, very sad and disappointed about the Brazilian public which was in the stadium.”
However he did later apologise for his comments: “Yes, sorry for the bad comparison I made,” Lavillenie said on his Twitter account. “It was a hot reaction and I realize it was wrong. Sorry to everyone.”
The competition had already been interrupted several times because of the heavy rain showers, was actually restarted from scratch after a few opening jumps were dismissed, and took three hours to complete. Ironically, Da Silva complained that the home support was actually a bit of a distraction: “The crowd were cheering me too much. I had to fix my mind on my technique, forget the people.”
Anyway it was Brazil’s first athletics gold medal so far in these Games, their second gold medal outright, after Joaquim Cruz won the 800m in Los Angeles in 1984, and their ninth medal altogether. It was certainly one of the shocks of the Games, no matter how much the crowd may have played in it.
For Da Silva, who hails from Sao Paolo, these were his first Olympics, and indeed he’d never won a Diamond League meeting, let alone a medal at a major championships.
Owens famously won four gold medals in Berlin in 1936, the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay, his African-American status clearly not favoured by his Nazi hosts, Adolf Hitler refusing to meet him or shake his hand after any of his victories, unlike most other gold medal winners at the Games, although many Germans had in fact cheered for Owens.
