Before New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr won the gold medal in the Olympic high jump, he went low.
Bailing out of an earlier attempt, Kerr threw himself under the bar in a moment that quickly went viral — going straight to the mat.
It quickly became a meme, with commenters captioning it, “Me to the sofa when I get home from work,” and, “How I dive into bed.”
“When someone tells me the bar has been raised and they believe in me,” ESPN’s Mina Kimes joked.
As for Kerr, it was no harm, no foul as heater beat out American Shelby McEwen in a jump-off for gold.
The pair turned down a chance to share the gold medal after both cleared the bar at 2.36 meters, but decided to keep on jumping instead.
Kerr then cleared 2.34 meters while McEwen fell short, knocking the American to silver and giving gold to New Zealand.
When Kerr finally made a jump, it came after the two had missed the bar 11 straight times between them.
“To do it the way I did it was amazing,” Kerr told reporters. “It was crazy.”
Three years ago in Tokyo, Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi had accepted a tie in the same situation instead of going to a jump-off.
“I have so much respect for what they did in Tokyo. But I always thought that to add to the story and to be able to be given the chance to actually do the jump-off would be so amazing,” Kerr said. “And I knew straight away that we were going to make history and we did that.
“I’m pretty sure Shelby was in the same mindset because we just looked at each other and it was pretty simple. We both just nodded and off we went.”
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