Katie Nageotte, whose greatest success so far was winning the American indoor championship, has been Olympic champion in pole vault since Thursday.

It took the 30-year-old three attempts to enter the competition at the starting height of 4.50 meters, but was then the only one who jumped 4.90 meters on the second attempt.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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She forced the favorite, Anselika Sidorova, the Doha 2019 world champion, to put up 4.95 meters instead of a third attempt above this height in order to stay in the lead.

The Russian failed and had to be content with tears with second place, level with the British Sandy Bradshaw (4.85).

Katerini Stefanidi, the Greek Olympic champion from Rio 2016, finished fourth with 4.80 meters.

"The greatest dream"

"I warmed up as badly as I haven't for a long time and had a few ugly jumps at the beginning," said Nageotte. “It took me a couple of heights to get in, but I struggled and finally made a fluid jump. Everything fit. "Not even beginning to understand what she had achieved, she said:" This is the greatest dream I have ever had for myself. And now I live it. ”Nageotte is trained by Brad Walker, 2007 world champion in pole vault. Only last year, she revealed, had he taken away her fear of big jumps in the fresh air instead of under the hall roof.

The silver medal of Siderova, who is also 30-year-old from Moscow, is the first of the Russian athletics team. The entire Russian team, which competes in Tokyo with more than 300 athletes as a team of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), had won 58 medals by Thursday, 15 of them gold. The world athletics association World Athletics only granted the Russians ten starting places for so-called neutral athletes because of the systematic doping that was exposed in 2014 and the association's long reluctance to deal with the consequences, as well as because of further attempts at fraud.

On Wednesday, Sergej Schubenkow, 2015 world champion in the hurdles sprint, retired before the heats;

he suffered a ruptured archilles tendon while warming up.

Walker Wassili Misinow, second in the world championship in Doha, was disqualified on Thursday in the competition over 20 kilometers.

He was initially warned three times and given a two-minute time penalty;

the fourth warning led to exclusion

Mikhail Akimenko and Ilya Ivanjuk competed in the high jump, second and third at the World Cup in Doha.

They finished sixth (2.33 meters) and nine (2.30) in the spectacular competition, which was shared by Mutaz Essa Barshim from Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi from Italy.

Unlike most other federations, World Athletics maintains its sanctions. The Russian association is suspended and has to follow a detailed plan for renewal and pay millions in costs for the investigations and disputes that it sparked. Three consultants from World Athletics are employed at the association's headquarters. At a meeting of the association's supreme council last week in Tokyo, the head of the Russian association's task force, Norwegian Rune Andersen, said he was seeing satisfactory progress. Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics, spoke of light at the end of the tunnel.

At the Olympic Games in Rio 2016, the world federation did not allow a Russian team, but instead only allowed neutral athletes from Russia who had not been part of the Russian doping system to participate in a new rule.

The whistleblower Yulia Stepanova could not benefit from the regulation because the IOC insisted on a nomination by the Russian Olympic Committee - grotesque for a woman who had fled for fear for her life - and also defamed her as "ethically not qualified".

Instead, the long jumper Darja Klischina started as the only Russian athlete;

she was not suspect because she lived in Florida.

At these games she was part of the Russian team, but failed in qualifying.