1. Pierre Quinon was a pole vaulter from France who won the 1984 Olympic Games pole vault gold medal and held the pole vault outdoor world record for just four days in the summer of 1983.
34 Facts About Pierre Quinon
1. 2.
Pierre Quinon, whose father was an 800 metres runner, started his pole vaulting career at the Rhodia Club Omnisports, which is based in the town of Salaise-sur-Sanne.
3.
Pierre Quinon made his pole vault competition debut in 1976, at the age of 14, in the town of Le Peage-de-Roussillon.
4.
Pierre Quinon became the French national champion at the youth level in 1979.
5.
Pierre Quinon won the silver medal at the 1981 European Junior Championships in Utrecht by clearing a height of 5.30 metres.
6.
In 1981, Pierre Quinon joined the Racing Club de France in Paris and trained there on a group basis with Patrick Abada, Jean-Michel Bellot and Thierry Vigneron, all under the supervision of Jean-Claude Perrin, who was a member of the club's coaching staff.
7.
Pierre Quinon's participation at the inaugural 1983 World Championships in Helsinki was a flop; he did not manage to clear a single height in his three attempts.
8.
On 28 August 1983, during an athletics meeting in the German city of Cologne, Pierre Quinon set a new pole vault outdoor world record of 5.82 metres, beating Vladimir Polyakov's 26-month-old outdoor world record by one centimetre.
9.
On that day, immediately after winning the pole vault contest, Pierre Quinon became the first pole vaulter to attempt to clear 6.00 metres in an official athletics meeting.
10.
Pierre Quinon won the silver medal with a height of 5.75m at the 1984 European Indoor Championships held in March 1984 in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, with Vigneron taking the gold medal.
11.
Pierre Quinon won three Championnats de France d'athletisme outdoor pole vault titles at the senior level in 1982,1983 and 1984 with heights of 5.55m, 5.65m and 5.70m respectively.
12.
Pierre Quinon was leading at 5.70m and Tully was in second position at 5.65m when the bar was raised to 5.75m, with Pierre Quinon vaulting first.
13.
Pierre Quinon thus won the gold medal with a height of 5.75m, becoming the first French Olympic male pole vault champion and the first French Olympic male or female gold medallist in any jumping event.
14.
On 16 July 1985 at the Meeting Nikaia de Nice in the French city of Nice, Pierre Quinon achieved his outdoor personal best of 5.90 metres, exactly 10 centimetres less than the new, outdoor world record set by Sergey Bubka in Paris only three days earlier.
15.
Pierre Quinon did not make the cut for the 1988 Olympics pole vault event in Seoul.
16.
Pierre Quinon became a member of a sports club there and was coached by Georges Martin.
17.
Pierre Quinon lived in Bordeaux until his retirement from pole vaulting in 1993.
18.
Pierre Quinon went into business - he owned a chicken rotisserie business, running it from a van based in Hyeres.
19.
Pierre Quinon acted as an advisor to the French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil in 2004, an experience which Pierre Quinon deemed as a "failure" when his protege failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games pole vault final in Athens.
20.
Pierre Quinon did abstract painting during the last five years of his life, starting from 2006.
21.
Pierre Quinon started painting after a meeting with the artist Colin Raffer in the same year.
22.
Pierre Quinon stated that he had always been interested in painting and that Nicolas de Stael and Jackson Pollock were his role models who inspired him.
23.
Pierre Quinon exhibited his works regularly in the Var with some success.
24.
Pierre Quinon supported and promoted the bid of his native city - Lyon - to host the 2015 World Masters Athletics Championships.
25.
Pierre Quinon worked on the preparations for the bid and accompanied his country's senior sports officials to the United States as part of his duties.
26.
Pierre Quinon's concluding speech made during the bidding presentations seemed to be a major factor in Lyon receiving the greatest number of votes from the General Assembly for both rounds of voting held on the same day immediately after the bidding presentations.
27.
At around 10 pm on Wednesday 17 August 2011 Pierre Quinon committed suicide by throwing himself headlong out of a window of his apartment in Hyeres from a height of 5 metres.
28.
Pierre Quinon had been suffering from depression for some time and had been taking tablets to treat it.
29.
Pierre Quinon was survived by his mother, his sister, his ex-wife and his two sons.
30.
Pierre Quinon said that he was lucky enough to share Quinon's life intimately for five years when he was his coach.
31.
Galfione said that they would train together when he was at the beginning of his pole vaulting career and Pierre Quinon was nearing the end of his, and that they became close.
32.
Marcel Ferrari, the president of the Ligue d'Athletisme Rhone-Alpes, who like Pierre Quinon was a member of the French delegation to the July 2011 World Masters Athletics General Assembly in Sacramento, California, told Lyon Capitale that he did not observe any warning signs of Pierre Quinon's impending suicide.
33.
Pierre Quinon's funeral took place in the commune of Bormes-les-Mimosas in the department of Var in the afternoon of 23 August 2011.
34.
Two giant, black and white posters of Pierre Quinon hung from the balcony of the town hall.