At some point during the lap of honour through the Stade de France, he looked happier than after his last jump. The French fans also cheered Markus Rehm, which must be a kind of knighthood for a German athlete in Paris this summer. When he reached his fans at the long jump pit, who were celebrating him even more euphorically, a poster reminded them that he had not come close to a goal that evening. “Let’s go Markus!” it said, with an arrow pointing towards “9m”.
A jump of nine meters, further than any human has ever managed? “I think it’s possible. It wasn’t possible this year,” said Rehm. And: “Gold is won, but of course I’m not super happy about it.” He smiled quite a lot while he said these sentences.
The sixth gold medal for Germany at these Paralympics, the first in athletics, was once again the easiest to predict at these games. Rehm won the long jump with a prosthesis for the fourth time, the 36-year-old has remained unbeaten for 13 years, practically his entire career. So far, so normal if you expect exceptional performances from an exceptional athlete.
:In the workshop for legs and feet
The games for people with disabilities are also a trade fair for the best aids: wheelchairs, prostheses, joints. When they break, they have to be repaired. A visit to the Paralympic pit lane.
His status as an icon of the Paralympic movement had already been fed with new images at the opening ceremony: He was one of the athletes who lit the Paralympic flame. And he started with an even higher world record than in Tokyo in 2021. In 2023 he jumped 8.72 meters. This year, however, Rehm was not in form and won with 8.13 meters. That is the same personal best as silver medalist Derek Loccident from the USA, who only managed 7.79 meters on Wednesday evening, but said afterwards that he had the feeling he could beat Rehm this time: “without a doubt”.
For Loccident, it was the first Paralympics. In 2018, his left leg was amputated below the knee after an accident. The 26-year-old continued to play college football anyway. He has been a track and field athlete since 2021 and competed in his first World Championships in 2023. His development potential is great, which was also evident in his jumps in Paris. He gave away a lot, especially when landing. Bronze winner Jarryd Wallace reached 7.49 meters.
Rehm was still tinkering and working on his prosthesis during the Paralympics
Rehm, who for years was in his own Champions League while other long jumpers with prosthetics tried to get into the second division, now really has competitors – that was one of the stories of the evening. “This is what I’ve always wanted all these years. Now I’ve got it, now I can’t complain,” said Rehm. He spoke quite clearly about the fact that the end of his athletic career is not that far away. Los Angeles 2028 is still a long way off, he would be 40 then. “My time will come, the guys will get better,” he said. “I hope that the time will come when they beat me. That will be the time when I can retire.”
The other story of the evening, however, was that it is not quite there yet, at least not quite. Now that he is no longer the only eight-meter long jumper with a prosthesis in the world, he would like to take part and develop the level a little further, said Rehm.
He is convinced that he can still do it, despite a season that was weak by his standards. He said he was “actually in top form” and had “gotten stronger, gotten faster”. That’s why Rehm originally wanted to jump with a matching, hard-set prosthesis. But he “didn’t yet understand” the rhythm of this harder prosthesis, as the master orthopedic technician Rehm put it. That’s why he did something he had never done before and something he always advises young athletes against: during the Paralympics, days before the competition, he tinkered and tinkered with his prosthesis.
If you understood him correctly, he played it safe for the long jump on Wednesday, partly because he expected a lot of headwind, and chose a soft prosthesis, the one from last year. And then he struggled again. Despite all his joy in the competition, you could see it in his jumps. He only managed 8.13 meters in his last attempt, 8.04 meters in the second, which would have been enough in the end, but is very short for him.
“We really need to analyze that now, because it annoys me a bit,” said Rehm, so a plan for the coming athletics season has already been set. He then spoke about his favorite topic, competitions with Olympic athletes, of which he would like to see more in the Diamond League. At least he won one comparison in that regard. He was the first male athlete from Germany, whether at the Olympics or Paralympics, to ring the bell for the winners in the Stade de France. He looked happy without any reservations.