Bouncing back from long jump medal misery

While there were many podium moments for British athletes to celebrate at the European Champs in Munich, Jacob Fincham-Dukes had his taken away

As he made his way around the track on his lap of honour in the Munich Olympic Stadium in August, Jacob Fincham-Dukes allowed his mind to wander. “I was already thinking about what it could mean in terms of getting on some funding, getting into better meets next year and even ideas of sponsorship,” he says of the fringe benefits which accompany podium success.

The “it” in question was the European silver medal he appeared to have won. An opening round 8.06m in the men’s long jump final had given the Briton an early lead and, though Olympic champion Militadis Tentoglou ultimately won gold, the Greek was the only athlete to jump further.

Fincham-Dukes was still thrilled at the thought of winning the first major senior medal of his career and he was allowed to take the applause of the substantial crowd, even to conduct some media interviews, before he heard the news.

“I was heading into the media tunnel and there was a random person who asked me: ‘Do you have any comment about the jumps not counting?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? and he replied: ‘Well on the result, they’ve changed it. They’re removed your 8.06m’.

“At this point, it was all hands on deck panic because we had no idea what was happening.”

A protest had been lodged by the French team that Fincham-Dukes’ foot had been marginally over the line for that 8.06m leap, a distance which had been matched in later rounds by Sweden’s Thobias Montler and Frenchman Jules Pommery. The Briton had remained in second place due to his second-best effort of 7.97m until the protest showed he had, in fact, committed a foul by the tiniest of margins.

Under the old system of using plasticine on the board, it would have been a legal jump but the new – and seemingly constantly controversial – system of using technology to determine if any part of the athlete’s foot has broken the vertical plane determined his attempt could not stand. He would be demoted to fifth.

The British team launched a counter protest and it wasn’t until gone midnight – hours after the competition – when it all became official. Many have questioned why so much time was allowed to elapse between Fincham-Dukes’ jump and the protest being made.

If he had known during the competition, there would have been time to adjust and try…