The scene at the Diamond League in Brussels last September is something Mutaz Essa Barshim will never forget. In front of 43,000 roaring spectators that filled up most of the King Baudouin Stadium, the Qatari high jumper completed the second highest leap in the history of the sport, clearing 2.43 meters on his first attempt to one-up Ukrainian Bohdan Bondarenko and secure the Diamond League title.
Only one man had ever jumped higher – Cuban Javier Sotomayor, who is the world record holder with a leap of 2.45m set 22 years ago. Over two decades later, Barshim is knocking on the door, hoping to eclipse that long-standing world mark. His thoughts when he sailed over the bar in Brussels? “Game over,” Barshim says with a laugh.
“It was just crazy, the atmosphere out there… oh my God. When the other guy (Bondarenko) jumped 2.40 everyone thought it was over for me because I needed to jump higher than 2.40 in the first attempt. Everyone was like ‘that’s it’.
“The other guy was already celebrating and I was thinking ‘just wait’,” he adds with a cheeky smile. “I was looking at my coach and he was like ‘we can do it’. That moment I just looked at the track, everyone was screaming but I had like tunnel vision and I felt ‘that’s the moment’. I went out there, first attempt, 2.43, it was the second highest jump in history… the stadium was shaking. It was a really big jump. I couldn’t sleep the night after. My back was hurting for a week, my knee was hurting for a week. But we did it. We made history.”
That jump sparked a #ThingsBarshimCouldJumpOver hash-tag craze on social media, where people photoshopped Barshim jumping over everything from a basketball hoop to a football goal to a full-sized elephant. High jump was going mainstream as the memes got more and more creative.
Sitting at an indoor track in Malmo, Sweden, where he has been training for the upcoming World Championships, Barshim reflects on the role he has played in putting high jump back in the spotlight. The 24-year-old was having a busy day, getting through two training sessions with his coach Stanislaw Szczyrba and doing a photo shoot for his sponsors Nike.
Up until two years ago, clearing 2.40m was becoming an urban legend – something that had not been achieved in 13 years. But Barshim changed that with one jump at the Prefontaine Classic meet in Eugene, USA, in June 2013. Four other men have cleared 2.40m or more since then, but it was Barshim who had ushered them all in.
“The mental barrier has disappeared,” is how Barshim explains it. Once that dam broke, the competition in high jump got fiercer. At the 2013 World Championships, Bondarenko edged out Barshim in what was the closest high jump battle in the history of the event. The Ukrainian snagged the gold with Barshim taking silver. The following year, Barshim took the world indoor title while the rivalry heated up outdoors between him, Bondarenko, Russian Olympic champion Ivan Ukhov, Canadian Derek Drouin and Ukrainian Andriy Protsenko.
While Barshim relishes the rivalry in his sport, he doesn’t keep tabs on what the others are doing. “I don’t know anything about nobody. We look only at my videos and that’s the only way we try to improve. I believe I’m different than others so I don’t want to look at anybody and mess up my technique,” he says.
But he’s proud of what he and his peers have done to the sport, adding: “The fight, it’s become like we’re highlighting high jump in the track and field world. It has always been the 100m but now it’s not. They’re talking about high jump. Whenever we jump, all events stop until we finish. That we’ve put it on the map is something really nice. The best time in high jump is now, and to be part of it is really amazing.”
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Barshim stands alone as the only Qatari homegrown world champion in athletics. Qatar, Bahrain and other nations in the region are often criticised for importing athletes, rather than producing them, and Barshim says it’s unfair to single out the Arabian Gulf for naturalising sportsmen and women.
“If you really think about it, every country is doing something like this. It’s not my subject to talk about because I’m not the one deciding who is who but of course it is unfair because every country is doing that. I don’t care who says no or yes, even the country where we’re in right now (Sweden)…” he says.
Barshim (r) and coach Stanley talk to Sport360’s Reem Abulleil in Malmo.
Barshim heads to Beijing with the world-leading jump of 2.41m this year, which he pulled off in Eugene three months ago. The only high jump world record to be broken in a World Championships was Stefka Kostadinova’s 2.09m in 1987. Surely Barshim is hoping to end that drought?
“I look at long term, not short term. Of course, I want to have the world record in my career, I want Olympic gold and all that. But I’m not going to say today or tomorrow. It might never happen,” he says.
“But at the end of the day I want to put 100 per cent effort in everything that’s possible to do. I don’t want to keep focusing on the world record because if I focus on that, what’s after that? It’ll seem like I don’t have any more motivation to go. But I want to focus on going as high as possible, maybe 2.50 and through that the world record will come.”
No man likes to see his world record go down but Sotomayor is warming up to the idea. Barshim met him for the first time in 2010, at the World Indoor Championships in Doha. He took pictures with the Cuban, like any fan would when they come face-to-face with an idol. They’ve struck up a friendship ever since and Barshim receives the occasional text or phone call from the legend.
“He told me, I don’t want my record to fall, but if it’s going to fall, I want you to be the one to do it,” says Barshim. Szczyrba, or Stanley as Barshim likes to call him, has complete faith that his student will break Sotomayor’s mark. “It’s not dreaming. I know he can do this. It’s only a question of when. You dream about something that is impossible to do but this is reality. We are waiting for the perfect situation,” said the Polish-born Swede.
Heading into Worlds, Barshim says a gold medal in Beijing would be an “added bonus” to his collection of accolades. His coach Stanley says he wishes they had more time before the competition kicks off (high jump qualification is on August 28).
Barshim’s last three participations in London, Stockholm and Oslo were all hit by rain and Stanley says jumping in wet conditions has affected his charge mentally. “If you look at how he jumped in Eugene and you compare to Oslo or Stockholm you don’t know what happened. But things can turn quickly,” noted Stanley.
