The day after Marco Tamberi won the gold medal at Tokyo Olympics in 2021, scores of Italian teenagers showed up at their gym asking the same question: “I want to try high jump.”
This is how sport can inspire – and influence – the youngsters. Olympic champions are idols waiting to be emulated.
You take Mondo Duplantis, for example, and you can easily figure the growing excitement in Sweden, following his astonishing performance at the Olympics in Paris.
68 years young
Only this time, the one who felt deeply inspired is a 68-years old ‘teenager’ at heart. Alpine skiing great Ingemar Stenmark is still somehow dealing with poles, but in this occasion he has decided to stun the audiences, trying to excel with the pole vault.
The Swedish sporting legend, who won two Winter Olympic golds in his career, took part in the world masters athletics championship and he turned out he’s not too shabby with a pole vault as well.
Gothenburg
The event took place in the old harbor city of Gothenburg located on the Swedish west coast. In front of a home crowd, Stenmark cleared a 3.0 meter pole vault which put him in the 8th place of the men’s 65-69 age category.
The winter king
Stenmark, who also won two Olympic and five world alpine ski gold medals in slalom and giant slalom, finished eighth in Final A of the men’s 65-69 age category.
He posted a video of himself clearing a home-made pole vault on Instagram last week, along with the caption: “The gym was busy”.
Stenmark retired from Alpine World Cup skiing in 1989 but his record of 86 career wins stood until March 2023, when American Mikaela Shiffrin broke it. He still holds the record for the biggest win margin in a World Cup alpine race, winning by 4.06 seconds in 1979.
Two legends
No word yet from his compatriot Mondo Duplantis who, for now, feels his 6.25 metres world record is under no threat by Stenmark. But considering the reaction of the crowd in Gothenburg, Mondo must know the popularity contest is pretty close.
Credit: AIPS Media
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