By Sean Ingle/The Guardian
While most athletes can cite the Olympic motto of citius, altius, fortius - swifter, higher, braver - few have taken it quite as literally as Mutaz Barshim. Two months before London 2012 the brilliant young Qatari high jumper suffered a stress fracture in the fifth lumbar vertebra of his back. He was in desperate pain and couldn’t jump. And while his doctors eventually gave him permission to compete at the Games, they warned him it would be risky and that he would not be able to attempt more than six jumps. Yet in the Olympic final, Barshim’s approach was as swift as his battered 21-year-old body would allow, and with the help of strong painkillers - and even stronger willpower - he bravely soared to a surprise bronze medal alongside Britain’s Robbie Grabarz and the Canadian Derek Drouin.
“That night was life-changing for me,” he admits. “I didn’t know what I would achieve because for weeks I had a huge pain in my back. I wasn’t able to do any training. No lifting. No jumping. Nothing. I was basically coming to the track, warming up, jogging and stretching and then going home.
“But two weeks before the Olympics the doctors told me, OK, if we give you painkillers maybe you can do six jumps. Because it was the Olympics I took my chance, and I ended up with a bronze medal after jumping 2.29m. That gave me a lot of confidence because I thought: I can do that with a broken back, imagine what I am going to do when I am healthy.”
He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The following season Barshim became only the eighth man ever to go over 2.40m and won silver at the 2013 world championships in Moscow. Last year, he was better still, winning gold at the world indoor championships in Sopot and raising his high jump personal best to an astonishing 2.43m, the second best ever. Only the Cuban Javier Sotomayor, who jumped 2.45m in 1993, has ever gone higher.
It is a target that Barshim, who returns to the Olympic Stadium today to compete in the Anniversary Games, has in his sights. At 6ft 3½in he is not especially tall for a high jumper, but he is blessed with a natural explosiveness and elasticity - “they are my strengths because I am not a strong guy,” he concedes - and an immense mental strength that allows him to see a bar that towers 50cm above him not as an obstacle but a challenge.
“A lot of it is mental,” he says. “You have to be a little bit crazy. You can’t just go with logic. Most people will look at a bar that’s 2.43m high and think it’s impossible to jump over it. But you have to say to yourself, listen, I am going to clear that height, it’s do or die.”
Barshim then gives a vivid description of what it is like for a world-class athlete to find himself in the zone. “Suddenly your focus changes and you realise you have this intense tunnel vision,” he says. “You don’t see people cheering for you. You don’t hear their noise. You don’t see anything but the bar. And when you are in that zone you don’t care how high it stands. You don’t fear it. You just think: if getting over this is what it takes to win a medal, or set a personal best, then I am going to make it.”
So what does it feel like when you clear 2.43m? “It is an amazing feeling,” he says, laughing. “It is like you are flying. Trust me, it takes a long time until you land. It’s incredible.”
What makes Barshim’s story more remarkable is that it took him years to make any discernible progress. His father was a decent middle-distance athlete and as a child he would often go along to watch him train, but he quickly found that running - or the long jump - was not for him. So he gave the high jump a go because it looked fun and allowed him to bounce up and down on trampolines.
“That would have been when I was about 13 but I wasn’t good at all until I was 17,” he chuckles. “I was the worst in my group at everything but I always kept coming to training. I just had a feeling that this is what I want to do. My father would tell me: ‘Don’t worry, the next time you go you will get it - just be patient.’ He was right, but for a long time I was really bad.”
A decade or so later Barshim’s battles with the 25-year-old Ukrainian Bohdan Bondarenko, who has jumped 2.42m, putting him joint third on the all-time list, are among the most compelling in athletics. Barshim believes their rivalry will lead to a new world record, and he is not alone. “I have met Javier Sotomayor many times and he says it would be great for it to fall to the new generation,” he laughs. “At the same time, he tells me he is happy to hold on to it for a little while longer!”
