for his return to competition, pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie does not pass any bar – Libération

At 37 years old, the 2012 Olympic pole vault champion made his comeback at the Clermont-Ferrand meeting this Wednesday, May 22.

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After ten months without competition and a hamstring operation in September, pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie believed in a great comeback. In search of the Olympic minimums to hope to participate in the Paris Games, the Frenchman chose the Clermont-Ferrand meeting for his resumption. The ace. The former world record holder in the discipline (6.16 meters in 2014) failed to pass any bar.

He failed three times at 5.35 meters, his first bar. He fell back onto the bar on his first two attempts and didn’t fully engage his jump on the third. “There is a lot of frustration,” admitted the athlete. No one likes to have a failed first. There is a lot of disappointment because I expected to do much better.”

The double Olympic medalist and five-time world medalist still leaves with “some positives”: “The warm-up that I did was a warm-up worthy of a competition at 5.80 meters […] It’s been just two months since I started pole vaulting again, with barely two or three weeks of intensity.” “The calendar means that we have to take some shortcuts if I want to give myself the means to go to the Games but the result today does not reflect my potential,” he added.

Olympic champion in 2012 in London, Renaud Lavillenie has until June 30 to achieve the Olympic minimums set at 5.82 meters, a bar that he has not crossed since July 2022.

“Last winter, I told myself that I was giving myself all the means to succeed, but, deep down, if I knew I could do it, I wasn’t sure. But during the internship in the USA at the beginning of April, something clicked,” he said Wednesday morning in the columns of the team. “I think he will clear 5.82 m this season,” confirmed his trainer, Philippe d’Encausse.