Sweden's Armand Duplantis competes to pass 6.25m and set the new world record in the men's pole vault final. Quah Hongchan of China in action in the women's 10m platform.
Two artists of land and water have captured this Games across two days. One rises upwards, the other falls downwards. Both pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, 24, and diver Quan Hongchan, 17, do this gracefully.
This is sport disguised as aerial poetry. On Monday, the magic number in the pole vault was 6.25m.
A world record. On Tuesday, it was 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. The perfect score for Quan Hongchan’s first dive in the 10m platform final.
When the Swede cleared the world record bar, even his rival Sam Hendricks leapt in the air in delight. When the Chinese teen ripped through the water, the commentators started laughing in incredulity. There’s something about watching perfection which makes coherent speech difficult.
None of Quan’s other four dives would touch perfection but it was enough. Enough for a second gold in Paris. Enough to retain her title from Tokyo.
Enough to just edge out her compatriot Chen Yuxi. Quan and Duplantis, on the face of it, have little in common, yet they have made us gasp. Both these sports are beautiful yet brutal, strong yet streamlined.
Falling from 10m plays havoc on a diver’s body. There’s tape on their backs, on shoulders, on arms, on ankles. Any art comes with a hefty price.
Only later, when it was over, did the stoic Quan allow herself to weep. Diving is the sister of ballet. Pole vault, as Duplantis describes it, is “exotic”.
One starts with a statue’s stillness, the other with a sprint. Both involve flights which involve tucks, twists and doing seamless work while going backwards. One lands in water, the other on foam.
One finishes vertically, the other horizontally. At this Games, some athletes kick and punch each other. Quan and Duplantis simply fight against themselves.
They chase something no one else can see. It is the level of the exceptional. A diving coach once said, “(Quan) kept asking me whether her positions and flights were OK.
Her spirit is a desire for perfection.” Duplantis is her echo and a Red Bull documentary on him has a neat title. The Next Centimetre.
Each one gets harder. Sergey Bubka took the world pole vault record from 5.85m to 6.
14m. Duplantis has raised it from 6.17m to 6.
25m. These athletes live at extaordinary altitudes, literally and figuratively, a sort of thin air no one else can exist at. At the pole vault the separation between second place and 11th place was .
25m. And between second place and Duplantis was .30m.
At the diving, Quan and Chen were only 4.9 points apart, but third place was another 48.6 points behind.
Said Caeli McKay of Canada in awe: “These (Chinese) girls are amazing. They’re very, very consistent and they don’t miss. And when they do, it’s for 8s.
” Both vaulter and diver have CVs which you can find in the cabinet marked Out Of This World. Quan has two golds at the Asian Games, seven at World Cups, five at world championships and now three at the Olympics. Duplantis has two Olympics golds and has set the world record nine times.
Both pursue mythical numbers. In diving it is 10 and, in Tokyo, Quan twice scored a perfect 10 from all seven judges. In pole vaulting it is 6m, a height no other vaulter reached at this Olympics.
Duplantis has crossed it 86 times. His drama lies in his gymnastics, yet his strength is his speed. Quan hits the water at around 50kmh, he sprints at just over 36kmh.
But he does it while holding a 5m pole which weighs 2.5kg as he tries to vault over the world’s tallest giraffe (5.7m).
When Duplantis chased the word record on Aug 5, Kendricks, the silver medallist, clapped, watched, encouraged. It was a sweet and startling moment, for rival had turned supporter. But then perhaps even Kendricks understood, this had gone beyond man vs man.
This was human vs gravity. Duplantis’ father thinks he could go to 6.4m.
Quan’s parents, she said in Tokyo, told her to “dive freely because it doesn’t matter whether I get a medal or not”. Where both will go, no one knows but here’s an idea. In 2018, Reuters reported that 17 Olympians were then working in the Cirque du Soleil.
Both would qualify, but at 17 and 24 they have work to do, medals to win, history to make, crowds to awe, perfection to shake hands with. We’re just happy to watch. One diver who barely makes a splash.
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