The 2013 European Indoor Athletics Championships were held over the weekend in Gothenburg, Sweden, finally answering my nagging question of “What the hell else do Olympic athletes compete in?” Men and women from all over Europe have competed since January to qualify for this huge athletics competition, and the biggest winners of this year’s EIAC included…
*scrolls through ridiculous list of foreign names and strange numbers, forehead vein bursts*
Yeah, so there you go – a bunch of people who won their events and others who didn’t. Real riveting stuff right there. But one winner stood out above the rest because he thought that he had done something super awesome only to find out that he didn’t. His name is Renaud Lavillenie, he is a French pole vaulter and I clearly know nothing about his strange sport.
Thank God, British pole vaulter Steve Lewis showed up to explain this odd meltdown video to us.
Lavillenie, despite his need for weakness tissues, won the pole vaulting competition, but he was still pissed that he was given a red flag for the bar resting on top of the, um, bar holder or whatever the hell it’s called.
Look, this is the first time I’ve ever written about pole vaulting – at least unrelated to Allison Stokke’s angelic soul – so I apologize if I don’t have the terminology down. It took a guy having a hissy fit to at least get my attention, though, so maybe more indoor athletes should steal a page from Lavillenie’s book and completely freak out after they perform, win or lose.
Also, and this is probably the most important thing to remember – Lavillenie rhymes with weenie.
(H/T to the fine folks at Reddit.)
