There was still a fragile hope. It burned out this Sunday afternoon on the shores of Lake Maine in Angers (Maine-et-Loire). Renaud Lavillenie, 37, failed to make a surprise appearance at the French Athletics Championships. Due to a lack of pace, the pole vaulter from Clermont stopped three times at 5.72 meters. This is too far from the 5.82 meters required to reach the Olympic minimum to hope to see the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Sidelined from competition for many months after surgery for a partial rupture of his left hamstring in September 2023, the French sport’s benchmark failed to surpass that 5.72m mark.
End of career? Hard to tell
“What I am being asked to do to go to the Games is a performance that I have already done in competition more than 150 times,” the athlete explained before the competition, not giving in to pessimism. “If you add in training, I must have passed that bar 400 to 500 times in my entire life. The result is a certain form of relaxation that I tell myself I know how to do. And my body remembers this.”
Unfortunately, reality has caught up with Auvergne. He has not reached or exceeded the fatal 5.82 m since the World Championships in Eugene (USA) in July 2022. Record holder from 2014 to 2020 (6.16 m).
At this point, it is difficult to say whether this failure in Anjou is synonymous with the end of his career. According to him, the athlete remained very vague on this issue, allowing himself to be carried away only by pleasure. In any case, this weekend sounds like the end of an era. The 2016 Olympic champion in pole vault, Brazilian Thiago Braz, also did not reach the required minimum. Suspended for 16 months for doping, he was still allowed to jump on Saturday.
Source: Le Parisien
I have worked in the news industry for over 10 years. I have a keen interest in sports and have written for many different publications. I am currently working as an author at 24 News Recorder. I cover mostly sports news but also write about other topics such as current affairs and politics. I have a strong interest in social media and how it can be used to engage with audiences.
