Anthony Ammirati Loses…But Then Again, Does He Really?

The social media blitz generated in the last few hours has been enormous (and not enormous in the way this story is considering "enormous") over French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati missing his chance at an Olympic medal. Supposedly Ammirati’s crotch got caught on a crossbar as he came down on his jump, seeing him finish 12th and disqualifying him from the next round of competition.

With portals such as E! news saying in this video that Ammirati’s “own package betrayed him,” and plenty of comments flying across social media, and tons of memes (not to mention how often the jump of two poles was seen) one has to wonder, what actually happened here?

A legitimate miss

Here on Today.com it was reported by Branko Miric, Ammirati's coach, that what happened to Ammirati was that “He hit the bar with his legs first and was going to miss that attempt anyway."

This jump now seen around the world, wasn’t Ammirati’s only attempt at qualifying for the men’s pole vault final. The rules are that pole vaulters get three tries, if they clear these they then qualify for another three at the next bar. Ammirati cleared the first two jumps at 5.40 meters and 5.60 but hit trouble on his third try, the 5.70 meter jump.

As Miric said succinctly about the moment seen and felt around the world: “He just had a miss.”

What Ammirati is saying

Ammirati weighed in on the miss to the French Athletics Federation, saying,

“It’s a big disappointment. I’m a bit gutted because I didn’t miss anything on the third attempt at 5.70 m. What I did miss was a bit of jumping in training to fine-tune the settings. Just a technical session."

He went on to add: “I was 100 percent physically, but I was missing a bit of pole vault. The conditions were good. It’s the first time I’ve started a competition without any stress.  As I was a total outsider, I only had one goal: to interact with the audience. I was almost there.”

Who is Anthony Ammirati?

Twenty-one-year-old Anthony Ammirati comes from Grasse, France. He is a track and field athlete with a specialty in pole vaulting. He has won two previous gold medals and set the French record in the sport three years ago. A year later he broke the junior pole vault record for a third time.

Ammirati qualified last year to work as a reserve police officer.