Pole Vault, Men

The qualifying round for the pole vault started after 9 PM (2100) and took until after midnight to whittle the field down to 13 vaulters who had cleared 5.65 (18-6½). The automatic qualifier was 5.75 (18-10¼), but the officials mercifully allowed all 13 into the final rather than continuing into the wee hours to potentially eliminate one vaulter. One who did not qualify was American Brad Walker, 2007 World Champion and silver medalist in 2005. In the final, only six vaulters could get over 5.70 (18-8¼), but for four of them, they would go no higher. Of those Denys Yurchenko (UKR) won the bronze medal as he cleared 5.70 on one attempt and had only one miss at lower heights. Yurchenko was injured on that clearance and kept passing but never jumped again. That left Russia’s Yevgeny Lukyanenko and Australia’s Steve Hooker to contest the gold and silver medal. Lukyanenko seemed to have the advantage when he made 5.80 (19-0¼) on his first attempt, Hooker needing three tries to go clear. Both cleared 5.85 (19-2¼) on their third attempt. At 5.90, Hooker won the gold medal, again with a third-attempt clearance, and he kept going to an Olympic record 5.96 (19-6½), at which he cleared his fourth consecutive height on his third try.

That was how the event and the results seemed to have ended. In 2015, however, the IOC began re-testing samples from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, using newer, more advanced testing techniques, in an effort to find those who had used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), but in whom it could not be detected at the time of those Olympics. This was one of the many events affected.

In November 2016 Denys Yurchenko (UKR) was disqualified for a positive re-test for turinabol (dehydrochloromethyltestosterone). He lost his bronze medal, which was re-assigned to American Derek Miles, who received the medal in April 2017 at a ceremony at the University of South Dakota.