Portugal's Pedro Pichardo admitted today that he felt like he lost the triple jump gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics, due to his mistakes that left him winning the silver, two centimeters behind Spain's Jordan Diaz.
“I think he lost the gold. I lost two centimetres and in the first jumps I was jumping 20 centimetres off the board. All I had to do was jump on the board and I thought I would win, but unfortunately, in this competition you cannot make mistakes and I made a lot of mistakes. In the end I paid and lost the gold medal,” he said.
In the mixed zone of the Stade de France, shortly after finishing the competition with a mark of 17.84 metres, two centimetres behind the Spaniard, who had already beaten him at the 2024 European Championships in Rome, he greeted all the journalists and said that he had kept his promise to speak after the final, having not done so in the qualifiers.
“Obviously it costs a lot. I have been working since the Europeans, I promised myself that I would work hard to show my level and be the best triple jumper. Unfortunately, that didn't happen today, I was two centimetres away, but that's life. You can't make mistakes as I said, unfortunately I made a lot of mistakes today and ended up losing the competition.”
For Pichardo, who was unable to repeat his gold medal at Tokyo 2020, the biggest mistake “was not hitting the board,” as “on the first two jumps I was jumping.” [17 metros e] 84, 20 cm from the board”.
“So I think that's evidence enough that five centimetres, at least if it had hit the board, it would have actually won, and unfortunately it didn't,” he added.
After his final jump of 17.81m, Pichardo seemed to think he had passed Jordan Diaz, but in the end he was disappointed that he couldn't do it.
“I always believed, I always believed until the last jump that I could pass Jordan, because the gap was very small, it was two centimetres. The coach actually told me that I just had to hit the board and I could do it. I was always looking, I was always sure that I could do it, but unfortunately that jump didn’t happen.”
Before the sixth and final jump, Pichardo abandoned the penultimate attempt, after feeling pain in his ankle, apparently due to poor support, and ended up “abandoning the fifth, to see if it would work” yet managed to make the final jump.
“The preparation was very good, I did big jumps in training, everything was going well, unfortunately today it didn’t happen. I don’t know if it was because of the plank or because the track was wet. I’m not going to look for excuses. It didn’t happen, but it was very good so far, but unfortunately that jump didn’t happen.”
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