“Usually athletes bring the bar down by flying into it on the way up or they fall on top of it,” says former Belgian pole vault champion Kevin Rans. Delicate collisions like Ammirati’s, he says, don’t happen very often.
“But these things happen, of course. It’s hard to keep your body completely under control up there, even though you usually have control of your genitals now.”
“I mainly remember other accidents, where athletes fell on their sticks, for example. I know that Ukrainian Denys Yurschenko once had a painful fall at the Sydney Olympics.”
