Yes, you can have two golds
Gianmarco Tamberi was at the top of his run-up, going through the routine in his head – direct approach, acceleration, sideways twist, Fosbury Flop off the left foot, arched back, and over the bar. It wasn’t just another jump -- it was his final attempt for gold at the Tokyo Olympics. He wanted the crowd to clap in rhythm and set the tempo for his run, but there were no spectators in the stands. The only man putting his hands together to give Tamberi his beat was Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim, the double world champion high jumper, and the man the Italian was trying to defeat.
Tamberi didn’t make his third attempt at 2.39m, just as Barshim hadn’t a few minutes before that. They were dead even on the countback. The moments that followed -- officials tried to explain the rules of a potentially tense jump-off for gold to the athletes -- ended in what will be the most memorable five words spoken at these Olympic Games.
“Can we have two golds?” Barshim asked. Yes, sirs, you can. This chain of events will go down as a defining example of the Olympic spirit. An example that echoes events from 85 years ago. Events that may have played a part in this extraordinary and emotional shared gold.
Shuhei Nishida was born in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture in March 1910. An athlete from his time at school, he majored in engineering at Tokyo’s Waseda University, made it to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, and won a silver medal in the pole vault to prevent an American sweep.
Nishida started working at Hitachi after the Olympics, and was soon joined in training by a promising pole vaulter, Sueo Oe. Four years younger. Oe, born in a Kyoto suburb, looked up to Nishida as a mentor. The two became close friends, and they went to the 1936 Olympics as team mates.
The pole vault final in Berlin was gripping. Though American Earle Meadows pulled away clearing an Olympic record 4.35m, there was a three-way tie for second at 4.25m between Nishida,
Oe, and another American, Bill Sefton. This led to a simple mathematical problem: three places on the podium, four people.
The concept of a countback to see who had fewer failed attempts did not exist at the time, and the athletes were told there would be a sudden-death jumpoff to decide silver and bronze. Nishida and Oe managed to make it past the first height (which was reset at 4.15m), but Sefton was eliminated. The jump-off was supposed to continue to decide silver and bronze, but in minds of the two Japanese, the mathematical problem was solved: three medals, three athletes. They flatly refused to compete against each other out of respect for their friendship and each other’s abilities.
The organisers wouldn’t have it, leading to a standoff. The Japanese team eventually decided that Nishida, being the “senpai” (old master), would take silver, and Oe, the apprentice, bronze.
Nishida and Oe seemed to accept the decision, but once they had the medals in their possession, decided to do something truly extraordinary. On returning to Japan, they asked a jeweller to cut both medals in half, and got them welded together to create two hybrid silver-bronze medals that would better reflect the outcome, and celebrate their eternal bond.
The following year, Oe cleared 4.35m to set a Japanese record. In 1941, he was killed in action in Philippines during the Second World War. Nishida continued to vault competitively, but could never scale Oe’s mark, which stood for 21 years. He was too old to make it to the Japan athletics team by the time the country returned to the Olympics at Helsinki 1952.
In the interim, the story of Nishida and Oe’s “medals of friendship” travelled across the world. It eventually played a role in the introduction of the countback, and to athletes being given a choice before the sudden death jump-off.
A choice that Barshim and Tamberi -- like Nishida and Oe, good friends who sometimes train together -- decided to exercise on Sunday night to enter the annals of Olympic history.