Shared gold: Is this the moment of the Games?

The decision of Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi to share the high jump gold medal is the moment of the Games so far.

High jump gold medallists Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi

Dick Fosbury skipped the opening ceremony of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to take a campervan to the Aztec pyramids at Teotihuacan with a couple of American swimmers.

“We stayed out there all night,” he said. “People were cooking soup over campfires and yelling, ‘Hey, Gringo! Come have some soup!’ We shared their food and drank beer and crashed out in the van or slept in the pyramids — I don’t really remember. The next morning, we got caught in this incredible traffic jam and missed the opening ceremony. But that night at the pyramids, I’ll always remember it. It was wonderful.”

Fosbury was a loner. He loved high jumping but was bloody hopeless at it. When someone bet he couldn’t so much as jump a chair, he tripped on it and broke his hand.

He was a smart cookie, though, and in his sheer desperation to stop being laughed at, he devised a different way to jump tall bits of furniture in a single bound.

Scissor kicks and western rolls were the norm, but he started jumping in the manner of a man pushed through a window of a high-rise building. Like an adult trying to recline on a child’s lounge. When the technique seemed to work and gained attention, he liked the hidden meaning in the name. The Fosbury Flop? How fitting for a bloke who’d spent most of his life feeling like one.

“Intuitively I liked the contradiction: a flop that could be a success,” he said. “It was descriptive, it was alliterative, and it fit,” he said, after winning the gold medal in Mexico City and returning to the Aztec pyramids to get back on the beers and escape the attention. When he went on the Johnny Carson show in America to demonstrate the technique that had made him famous, he slipped and fell flat on his face. He was rarely seen in public again.

Fifty-five years later, in Tokyo, there was nothing but Fosbury Flops in an Olympic high jump final that dwarfed the 100m for drama and theatrics at the New National Stadium. I was sitting next to the finishing line for the sprint but ultimately, the greatest action was elsewhere: the women’s triple jump was a blast even before Yulima Rojas’s world record. Her build-up to each attempt was tremendously entertaining. Oh, for a crowd. But the real dynamite was at the high jump.

Australia’s Brandon Starc did wonders to finish fifth because his opponents were freakish in their abilities, led by Qatar’s stringbean Mutaz Essa Barshim and Italy’s total emotional wreck, Gianmarco Tamberi.

Starc was only two centimetres behind them — incredible, really, not much more than a fingernail — as Barshim and Tamberi finished level on 2.37m. The countback was another tie. So an official walked over and asked: “Do you want to continue to jump-off?”

Barshim had looked the winner from the start. He was sailing over the earliest heights and it was a shock when he flopped at 2.37m. Tamberi was running on adrenaline.

I never realised the showmanship of the high jump. At the height of his quest on Sunday night, Tamberi, who broke his ankle before the Rio Games, threw his old plaster cast onto the runway. On it was written, “Road to Tokyo 2020. The 2020 was crossed out and replaced with 2021.”

Do you want to continue to jump-off? That preceded the moment of the Games so far. I would have bet the house on Barshim winning a shootout. But he looked at Tamberi, who was trembling at the enormity of it all. He looked back at the official and said: “Can we have two golds?” The official nodded.

Tamberi walked backwards. He paused and stared at Barshim. And then he went bonkers. After a good while rolling on the ground, wailing, clutching his plaster cast, unable to take two steps before collapsing and bawling all over again, Barshim told him to get up. Perhaps he was thinking, you’re embarrassing yourself, mate. But it was wonderful.

Asked about the moment the official nodded, Barshim said: “I look at him. He looks at me. And we know it. We just look at each other and we know. That is it. It is done. There is no need (for jump-off). He is one of my best friends, not only on the track, but outside the track. We work together. This is a dream come true. It is the true spirit, the sportsman spirit, and we are here delivering this message.”

There’s one especially great photo of the joyous aftermath. Tamberi has his right arm around Barshim. There’s a small Italian flag on his left shoulder. Barshim is wrapped in the Qatar flag. His head is curling into the Italian’s embrace.

It looks to me like Tamberi is thinking thank you, thank you, thank you. Because I reckon Barshim has given him a gift. And it looks to me like Barshim is saying words to the effect of, oh no worries mate. Enjoy.

That moment was the Olympics at its best. A sport revolutionised by a loner has ended up with two Olympic champions. In the end, nobody flopped.