A little Meyfarth story: Tobias Potye from Munich takes silver in the high jump
Created: 08/19/2022, 11:18 am
By: Gunter Klein
Bent over: Tobias Potye from LG Stadtwerke in the competition of his life.
© dpa/Sven Hoppe
By Tobias Potye there is a Munich high jump silver - 2.27 meters are enough for it.
Memories of Ulrike Meyfahrt are awakened.
Munich – High jump stories in Munich's Olympic Stadium are special – we've known about it since 1972, since Ulrike Meyfarth, Germany's suddenly most famous "16-year-old high school student".
People can even name the day when they started to fly out of nowhere.
She won the Olympic gold medal on September 4 and also set the world record of 1.92 meters.
On Thursday evening, a German surprise story repeated itself on a smaller scale and on a smaller scale.
But she even had a Munich touch: Tobias Potye, born in the Bavarian capital, lives here and competes for LG Startwerke, won the silver medal at the European Championships.
The high jump facility was set up in the corner where Ulrike Meyfarth became the youngest Olympic champion in the history of athletics.
Potye is 27, so understated age, but you didn't have to have him on the bill for awarding the medals.
His career took place in the depths of the German perspective squad, his personal best was 2.27 meters from 2018. At the German Championships he reached 2.30 meters.
At the European Championships in Munich, he achieved his second-best height.
Even if 2.27 meters is not world class - hardly any discipline is so prone to failure due to small things, already at the run-up, at the take-off.
In his first and second attempt over the 2.30, the super lanky Potye, whose 72 kilograms are distributed over a body length of 1.98 m, only slightly touched the bar.
The Munich player put himself in a good position by not making any failed attempts up to the 2.30 mark.
He took the entry height of 2.18 like the 2.23 and 2.27 in the first attempt - otherwise only the Italian Gianmarco Tamberi, who the fans still know from the beautiful and fair scene in Tokyo in 2021: At that time he and his Qatari rival agrees on a shared gold.
Now Tamberi won a European Championship, which belongs to him alone. He managed the 2.30 at the second attempt, then he made a show for the audience and tried his hand at 2.33.
In vain.
The high jump conditions were not ideal after a downpour, the track was still wet.
Mateusz Przybylko, the second German, struggled unsuccessfully.
He only got over 2.23 on the third attempt, he couldn't crack the 2.27 - resulting in sixth place.
He had his Meyfarth moment four years ago in Berlin: European champions in Germany.