2024-08-05 02:05:02
The latest social media sensation coming out of the Paris Olympics is a French pole vaulter who experienced a eye-grabbing, NSFW mishap during a qualifying event.
In the hopes of making it to the men’s pole vault finals on Aug. 5, France’s Anthony Ammirati participated in the men’s qualifying event on Aug. 3.
In a now viral video shared across social media, Ammirati initially appeared to have cleared his jump. Then, his crotch coincided with the crossbar, sending it tumbling to the ground.
The 21-year-old Olympian was not among the 12 athletes who qualified for the men’s pole vault finals, with Sweden’s Armand “Mondo” Duplantis ready to defend his Olympic title with another gold medal, per the Olympics.
Ammirati told the French Athletics Federation that his loss was “a big disappointment.”
“I was 100% physically, but I was missing a bit of pole vault,” he later added. “The conditions were good. It’s the first time I’ve started a competition without any stress. As I was a total outsider, I only had one goal: to play with the public. I was almost there.”
However, viewers had a different reaction to the blunder online, with one user on the social media site X writing that it was “the most peculiar way to lose a pole vaulting Olympic competition.”
“Anthony Ammirati failed the bar and the commentators are clearly having a hard time acknowledging what happened,” another user wrote on cr. “HELP I’M DYING.”
Despite the hilarious reactions on social media, Ammirati’s crotch may not have been responsible after all.
What really happened during the men’s pole vault qualifying event?
While some headlines said Ammirati’s crotch cost him his Olympic dreams, another body part actually hit the crossbar first, pole vaulting coach Branko Miric says.
“He definitely hit the bar with his legs first and was going to miss that attempt anyway,” Miric, founder of Apex Vaulting, tells TODAY.com.
This wasn’t Ammirati’s only attempt at qualifying for the men’s pole vault final, either.
“You have three tries to clear a bar and if it cleared, then you get another three attempts at the next bar, which gets raised,” Miric says. “He just had a miss.”
Ammirati successfully cleared his jumps at 5.40 meters and 5.60 meters but experienced his blunder on his third attempt attempt to clear his 5.70 meter jump. Olympians had to clear a 5.80 meter height to proceed through to the final.
Miric says it’s a “very common occurrence” for an athlete to not get enough depth to clear a vault over the crossbar, which was the case with Ammirati’s viral miss.
“When you’re pole vaulting, not only do you need the height, but you need the depth,” he says. “You have to go deep enough to get over the bar. It’s very common in the vault, you’ll see people who look like they have the height, but they don’t have enough depth and they come down on it and the bar falls off.”
NBC Olympics reported he ultimately tied for 15th place with Ben Broeders from Belgium, Simon Guttormsen from Norway, and Piotr Lisek and Robert Sobera from Poland.
