- A heart-warming display of sportsmanship
The iconic moment was captured on video and was widely shared on social media, with some describing it as the “best moment of Tokyo 2020”.
Sharing his thoughts on the moment, author Andrew Fidel Fernando posted to Twitter: “Fave moment of the Olympics so far. Barshim (Qatar) and Tamberi (Italy) were tied in the high jump final. The official is there talking about a prospective jump-off, but Barshim asks immediately: ‘can we have two golds?’ One look, no words exchanged, they know they’re sharing it.”
The sharing of Olympic medals is nothing new, of course. Over 2,600 medals have been given to athletes in the Olympics, but there have been only 120 instances of medal-sharing since the modern Summer Olympics began in Athens back in 1896.
The gold medal itself has only been shared 31 times, the majority of them in sports where the winners were determined either by judges (like gymnastics) or by two athletes performing equally well and officials deciding to declare them both as joint winners.
However, this is the first instance in history where rival athletes from different countries asked about the possibility themselves, and then chose to share the medal.
We spoke to Sri Lanka’s own Olympic representative, badminton player Niluka Karunaratne, who represented Sri Lanka at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 in his third consecutive Olympic Games after being named as one of nine athletes in the Sri Lanka squad.
Niluka expressed his thoughts on this shared moment for these two athletes, stating that “it is the Olympic spirit”. “As the biggest sporting event in the world, athletes are competing at an entirely different level of motivation,” he said, adding: “When two athletes have performed their best, and they’re not making any mistakes, then they are evenly matched, but most of all, it is the pure Olympic spirit that we see here.”
He also commented on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games experience, stating that this year, it is a very different Games. “Many of the top-level athletes were not able to perform their best,” he said, adding that “they were unable to maintain their momentum during these very difficult times, both physically and mentally”. He said the decision that was made to hold the games amidst this pandemic was an incredibly difficult one made by the Japanese Government and the International Olympic Committee – on behalf of the athletes who wished to represent their country, for the people around the world, for humanity, and for sports, it was a tough decision held during unprecedented times.
Like most good things, the internet had a minority who felt the need to cast a shadow over an otherwise absolutely positive and heart-warming decision, with a rare few drawing comparisons to American gymnast Simone Biles who dropped out of the Olympic individual all-around competition in order to prioritise her mental health, with one person stating that “this is the snowflake Olympics, first, we have Simone Biles giving up and now there’s athletes deciding to hold hands and shared gold instead of competing to decide who is the best”.
The negativity, of course, has since been piled on and buried with the good vibes emanating from such a decision where athletes, in a great display of true sportsmanship, put aside their individual ambitions to showcase what it really means to be an Olympic champion.
There’s also the logical explanation, the less magical version where a risky venture is something that involves the possibility of a loss. A risk-neutral person is equally happy with a guaranteed outcome; considering the situation with Barshim and Tamberi, if they participated in a jump-off, only one of them would win a gold medal and the other would face losing that medal, then the only rational and selfish choice was to share the medal because it makes winning the gold medal a certainty.
There is an added element to this tale of medal-sharing. Even though Barshim suggested the idea of sharing, Tamberi could have just as easily turned it down, but the fact that the two are good friends, on and off the track, made the decision that much more organic. It is easy to see why two friends might want to share an Olympic gold medal.
Commenting on the moment, Shehan Ambepitiya, a decorated Lankan athlete renowned for his numerous accomplishments in the Commonwealth Games, shared: “I think it is the spirit of the sport; win or lose, it is all about competing, it is a sentiment we all share. I know as an athlete, we make a lot of sacrifices. In my 16-year-long career, I sacrificed everything for the sport, and to win that medal, one athlete knows what it means to another.”
He said that even as a coach, he is certain that the decision to split the gold would have been a no-brainer, but of course, he noted that making a logical decision in such a high-pressure situation, with the people of one’s country looking over you, is never easy and the fact that two friends were able to come to that decision and share the glory is a beautiful thing.
Ambepitiya added also: “It is possible that motivation to hold on to that sure win may have sparked the decision; it was reported that the Italian athlete Tamberi had just recovered from a career-threatening ankle injury as well, and similarly Barshim has had his own struggles and so, I think they made the right choice, it was a win-win situation for both, which doesn’t at all take away from the incredible sportsmanship displayed by them on the track.”
What Ambepitiya is referring to here is an incident that took place back in 2016, just before the Rio Olympics. Attempting a 2.41 m high jump to break his own Italian record, Tamberi crash-landed, sustaining severe injuries. Having set off on a journey of recovery, five years later, becoming a joint Olympic gold medallist with his friend Mutaz Essa Barshim is a remarkable sequence of events.
Beautiful moments of sportsmanship come in many shapes and forms and on the world’s biggest stage for sporting excellence, it is a special moment in time that we get to witness two friends, the best in the world at what they do, choosing to share the glory.