Pierre Quinon

Fernand Gonder won the 1906 Intercalated Games pole vault gold medal, but medals won in those games are not officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee today.

This was to be Quinon's only appearance at the Olympic Games.

Tully won the silver medal (5.65m), with Vigneron and Bell each receiving a bronze medal (5.60m).

Just after winning the Olympic gold medal, Quinon told L'Équipe in an interview, "I had made it my mission to succeed there (at the Olympic Games) where the other Frenchmen had failed."

Pierre Quinon (20 February 1962 – 17 August 2011) was a pole vaulter from France who won the 1984 Olympic Games pole vault gold medal and held the pole vault outdoor world record for just four days in the summer of 1983.

Pierre Quinon, whose father was an 800 metres runner, started his pole vaulting career at the Rhodia Club Omnisports (athletics section), which is based in the town of Salaise-sur-Sanne (in the department of Isère).

Pierre's father coached him at that club.

Pierre did his first pole vaulting training session in the Lyon suburb of Saint-Priest under the supervision of his coach, Christian Bourguignon, who was from Lyon.

He made his pole vault competition debut in 1976, at the age of 14, in the town of Le Péage-de-Roussillon (in the department of Isère).

He became the French national champion at the youth level (under the age of 18 years) in 1979.

He never again pole-vaulted at the standard similar to that of the first half of the 1980s.

He burst onto the scene at the national level in 1981 thanks to a height clearance of 5.50 metres outdoors.

He won the silver medal at the 1981 European Junior Championships in Utrecht by clearing a height of 5.30 metres.

In 1981, Quinon joined the Racing Club de France in Paris and trained there on a group basis with Patrick Abada, Jean-Michel Bellot and Thierry Vigneron (a former pole vault world record holder), all under the supervision of Jean-Claude Perrin, who was a member of the club's coaching staff.

He also won three Championnats de France d'athlétisme (French National Athletics Championships) outdoor pole vault titles at the senior level in 1982, 1983 and 1984 with heights of 5.55m, 5.65m and 5.70m respectively.

Quinon's participation at the inaugural 1983 World Championships in Helsinki was a flop; he did not manage to clear a single height in his three attempts.

This was to be Quinon's only appearance in an outdoor or indoor World Championships.

On 28 August 1983, during an athletics meeting in the German city of Cologne, Quinon set a new pole vault outdoor world record of 5.82 metres, beating Vladimir Polyakov's 26-month-old outdoor world record by one centimetre.

On that day, immediately after winning the pole vault contest, Quinon became the first pole vaulter to attempt to clear 6.00 metres in an official athletics meeting.

Although Quinon failed by a significant margin, his coach Jean-Claude Perrin told the French media that Quinon "did not make a fool of himself".

"To be alone in front of a bar (in an attempt to set a new world record after having won the contest) was not a fun thing. I preferred fighting the other competitors," Quinon would say later, regarding his failed, world record attempt of 6.00 metres in Cologne.

However, Quinon's outdoor world record was very short-lived.

On 1 September 1983, in the Italian capital Rome, his countryman Thierry Vigneron beat it by one centimetre.

Quinon won the silver medal with a height of 5.75m at the 1984 European Indoor Championships held in March 1984 in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, with Vigneron taking the gold medal.

At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, in the absence of Sergey Bubka because of the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics, Quinon, Vigneron and two Americans - Earl Bell and Mike Tully - were the favorites to win the pole vault title.

All four of them had cleared 5.80m or higher prior to these Olympic Games.

After Bell and Vigneron had missed three consecutive attempts at 5.70m, Quinon and Tully battled each other for the gold medal.

Quinon was leading at 5.70m (he had cleared this height on his first attempt) and Tully was in second position at 5.65m when the bar was raised to 5.75m, with Quinon vaulting first.

The Frenchman cleared the 5.75m on his first attempt.

Although clearing this height would have put Tully in a tie for first place, he elected to pass.

Neither man was successful at clearing 5.80m.

Quinon thus won the gold medal with a height of 5.75m, becoming the first French Olympic male pole vault champion (the French had never even won a single medal in this event in previous Olympic Games) and the first French Olympic male or female gold medallist in any jumping event.

On 16 July 1985 at the Meeting Nikaïa de Nice in the French city of Nice, Quinon achieved his outdoor personal best of 5.90 metres, exactly 10 centimetres less than the new, outdoor world record set by Sergey Bubka in Paris only three days earlier.

An ankle injury sustained in 1986 and other injuries sustained thereafter adversely affected Quinon's pole vault performance in the later years of his career.

He did not make the cut for the 1988 Olympics pole vault event in Seoul.

Philippe Collet, Philippe d'Encausse and Thierry Vigneron were instead selected to represent France at those Olympics.

In 1989, Quinon settled in Bordeaux.

He became a member of a sports club there and was coached by Georges Martin.

He lived in Bordeaux until his retirement from pole vaulting in 1993.

In the same interview, Quinon considered his Olympic title as a "collective reward" and opined that "the pole vault training programmes started and carried out by Maurice Houvion (who was the coach of Jean Galfione, the 1996 Olympic pole vault champion, for Galfione's entire pole vaulting career) and Jean-Claude Perrin had borne fruit."