Olympic high jump gold medalists Kerr and Tamberi debate the rules for ties

ROME (AP) — At the last two Olympics, the men’s high jump produced a tie — requiring a big decision.

In Tokyo four years ago, Gianmarco Tamberi and Mutaz Barshim agreed to share the gold.

In Paris last year, Hamish Kerr and Shelby McEwen agreed to a jump-off that Kerr finally won after an interminable series of misses.

Nearly a year later, Kerr is suggesting that sharing should be eliminated from the rule book.

“In the future, does that need to be an option?” Kerr, who is from New Zealand, told The Associated Press on Thursday as he prepared to compete at Rome’s Diamond League meeting.

“It’s probably not something that I would ever take,” Kerr said of accepting a tie. “I think it’s great that we have people jumping off for medals.”

Tamberi, unsurprisingly, does not agree.

The Italian noted how Kerr and McEwen combined for 11 straight misses — so many that there wasn’t enough room on the scoreboard for all the Xs — in regulation and the jump-off. And that the bar was lowered twice during the jump-off before Kerr finally broke the streak of failures when he got over 2.34 meters (7 feet, 8 inches) to win.

“It becomes an endurance competition and isn’t about who can jump the highest anymore,” Tamberi said when asked about Kerr’s comments. “I think people appreciated the moment of sportsmanship that we created in Tokyo.

“Or maybe they should try to find a different way to determine the winner in terms of who jumps the highest,” Tamberi added. “But jump-offs are really strange, because it’s about who has more energy and who can last longer. It’s like turning the 100 meters into the 10,000.”

The shared gold between Tamberi and Barshim strengthened an existing friendship and Kerr said he feels an enduring bond with his American opponent McEwen, too.

“Obviously we could have shared and we could have sort of walked away from it without having such an awesome experience and a really kind of engaging moment for the crowd and for everyone back home,” Kerr said. “But we both decided to jump and that was really special. We’ve got a special bond now.”

Tamberi is back

Kerr and McEwen have continued their rivalry this season with the American winning two of their three meetings.

But Tamberi is making his season debut in Rome and looking to spice things up, while McEwen is not entered for the Golden Gala.

Both the 28-year-old Kerr and the 33-year-old Tamberi plan to continue competing through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

First up, though, is this season’s world championships in Tokyo in September.

Calendar change

World Athletics has made a calendar change so that starting this year the track season ends with the worlds.

That means that the Diamond League finals in Zurich will be held at the end of August.

“It’s a good move, because athletes need to prepare for the worlds and there won’t be a post-worlds or post-Olympics where athletes often compete only to salute their fans or for economic reasons,” said Tamberi, whose wife is expecting the couple’s first child in August.

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