World Championship bronze for track and field athlete Simon Ehammer

When he starts for the last time, he already knows that he has won a medal. The last round in the long jump had once again accelerated the heartbeat of the spectators. The Chinese Jianan Wang had sailed 8.36 meters and had improved from 5th to 1st place. Ehammer had thus slipped from silver to bronze, and Cuban Maykel Masso was still in the run-up, who had jumped just an inch less than Ehammer.

But Masso couldn’t improve, Ehammer’s 8.16 was enough for the medal. One last jump, and then the Appenzeller went straight to his coach Karl Wyler, gave him a high five and hugged him. And so that he was also aware of his achievement, he was given a mockup of a medal on the lawn below. Ehammer is only the seventh Swiss to win a medal at the World Championships in Athletics.

This is outstanding and also stands for the pleasing development of Swiss athletics in recent years. Even more remarkable, however, is the fact that Ehammer is the first decathlete to win a medal in an individual discipline at a world championship. For example, the long hurdle world record holder Karsten Warholm, like many track and field athletes in his youth, was an all-around fighter and once won silver in this discipline at the U-20 European Championships. But he only became world class over the hurdles when he fully concentrated on it.

He doesn’t want to be a specialist

Ehammer, however, defines himself as an all-rounder and won silver in the heptathlon at the World Indoor Championships last March. He says he started at the World Championships in Eugene as a kind of representative for his professional colleagues. He wanted to show that decathletes can also be world class in individual disciplines. Because that is actually often overlooked.

The only comparison you can think of to Simon Ehammer is Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who has held the world heptathlon record for 34 years with 7291 points. The American was one of the big stars of the 1980s and early 1990s, winning gold in the heptathlon and long jump at both the World Championships and the Olympic Games. In her second discipline she achieved the second best performance in the history of athletics with 7.49 meters.

The decathletes were once considered the kings of athletics, but today they are often marginalized at major events because they collect their points over two days like squirrels collect their nuts. But that is much more than hard work, it is often excellence by the meter.

Ehammer jumped 8.45 meters in the all-around competition in Götzis this year. This is not only a Swiss record and a world record within a decathlon, it is also still the best performance by a long jumper this year. Ehammer is also the third best hurdle sprinter in the history of Swiss athletics. His best time of 13.48 would be enough to take part in the European Championships in Munich in August.

There, however, the 22-year-old will concentrate on the all-around, and he has said several times that a medal is his goal there too. In Götzis he used the long jump as a kind of take-off ramp for the national record. He totaled 8377 points. But he was a bit ill during the two days in Vorarlberg, he says. That easily cost him 200 points. And in this millennium, 8,500 points would always have been enough to win a medal at the European Championships – mostly even gold.

Ehammer knows very well what he can do and he has never been afraid to set high goals. He wants to go all the way up and has already talked about 9000 points in the decathlon. Such ideas motivate him, he is a man of emotions who absorbs the energy of the spectators in the stadium and loudly celebrates good results.

However, for a long time he found it difficult to accept stagnation or setbacks. He was spotted on a sports field as an eleven-year-old boy because he could run very fast. The coach who noticed this called the Ehammers so many times that they sent him to the club. He was already ambitious back then. Too ambitious. He got better from competition to competition, but when he didn’t hit a best, he got mad as hell.

This is not a good quality for an all-around fighter, because it is very rare for someone to catch a wave and surf from high to high for two days. The reality is rather that there are small setbacks every now and then that the athlete has to deal with quickly in order to be able to surpass himself again in the next discipline.

Ehammer has been trained by the brothers René and Karl Wyler for years. René Wyler once said: «Simon stood in his own way. Even in training he got annoyed when something didn’t go the way he wanted. A lot of negative energy came out of it.” In the meantime, the athlete has found a method that suits his character: get really angry for ten minutes, then look ahead again.

He does part of his training with amateur athletes

Maybe the environment helps him to stay grounded. Ehammer comes from a small country club, the TV Teufen. He still does part of his training there, under Karl Wyler and with athletes who are just hobby athletes. Karl Wyler is also the man who coaches Ehammer at the competitions. However, René Wyler, under whom the athlete completes his units at the Herisau sports school, is responsible for controlling the training.

Although he has long since completed this, he has his sporting basis there. Yves Zellweger, who is responsible for the start, sprints and jumps, also takes care of him there. A former long jumper, his handwriting is clearly visible on Ehammer’s flights.

The Wylers shaped Ehammer into a modern multi-fighter. If these all-rounders were muscle-bound colossuses 20 years ago and more, today speed is what counts most. At 184 centimeters tall, Ehammer weighs just over 80 kilograms. He has gained strength in recent years, which he also needs for the throws. However, when building up the muscles, care was always taken to ensure that the athlete gained as little weight as possible. This enables him to be world class in the long jump as well. In the field of World Cup finalists, he didn’t look bulkier than his opponents, at most he had a little broader shoulders.

The last two years were probably of crucial importance for the maturing process of the still young athlete. In 2020, the 2019 European Junior Champion increased his personal best by almost 500 points and led the world list for a long time. But the world association decided not to take the results from the first year of the pandemic into account for the selections for the summer games, which were postponed to 2021. A little trauma with zeros in the pole vault ensued, and at some point the body started to rebel.

It was a very difficult time for the athlete. He wanted to ignore the pain in the groin area and still make the Olympic standard with an additional competition. At that time he said sentences like: “My body doesn’t interest me. I do what I want.” There were tough discussions with the coaches, the parents, the girlfriend. Until Ehammer finally realized that it made more sense to take a sensible approach. He skipped the decathlon and competed in the long jump at the U-23 European Championships.

There he won gold and also gained important experience with regard to the 2022 World Championships, because the individual disciplines are held in title fights in tournament format, in long jump, for example, with qualification and final. In the qualification there are only three jumps. Ehammer started with a foul and then jumped to 7.90. That would not have been enough for participation in the final, but the third set to 8.09 still brought the qualification and thus the chance for a medal.

With full risk in the changing wind

In the final, Ehammer was able to start six times. The second jump to 8.16 put him in the silver position for a long time. Ehammer then risked everything, flew very far on the fourth and fifth attempt, but slightly overstepped both times. The competition was not easy for the jumpers because the wind was constantly changing. At Ehammer it always blew from behind, but the values ​​fluctuated between 0.5 and 2.3 meters per second. It’s not easy to hit the bar correctly.

Ehammer said he was shaking until the Cuban, who was just ahead of him for the last try, completed his jump. After that he knew he had won a medal. When he hugged Karl Wyler after his last attempt, they would have been happy – but also briefly discussed what he could have done better to maybe even win gold. Even in the moment of happiness, ambition is always present.

Ehammer will now fly home and devote himself entirely to the all-around, his true discipline. In two training camps he will work on the longer runs and throws to be ready for the European Championships in Munich. The year 2022 is a special one, the World Cup was postponed by a year due to the pandemic, so that the Europeans had two highlights of the season. Ehammer’s decision to concentrate on the long jump at the World Championships and the decathlon at the European Championships has already paid off for the first time.

But he wants to continue to focus on both disciplines in the future. In May, the focus will be on the all-around, in June on the long jump. And at the big event, the young man will appear twice in the future, provided the schedule allows it. Ehammer has already told the organizers of the 2023 World Cup that they should think about him a little – not without good reason. Exceptional athletes like him are few and far between. And it’s always good for the sport when someone solves a Herculean task with as much ease as Simon Ehammer was born with.