And Finally...

Earlier today, 21-year-old French Olympian Anthony Ammirati experienced that rarest of things: A moment, and a specific set of circumstances, that we’re reasonably sure that no human being on the planet has ever lived through. Unfortunately for Ammirati, that truly unique, one-in-a-trillion experience could best be summed up as “Losing at the Olympics while millions of people watch your genitals visibly catch on the pole vault bar,” which isn’t necessarily the sort of field most people want to be pioneers in.

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First up: A very good day for anyone owning stock in the word “bulge,” with a number of outlets opting, like Variety, to simply declare “French pole vaulter’s bulge costs him an Olympic medal.” (By the way, lots of these headlines are going to assert Ammirati lost because he hit his dick on the bar; to our eyes, the jump was already in trouble before the eye-catching moment.) The “Manhood” Council is also dining out today, with titles like The New York Post‘s “French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati misses Olympic final after manhood catches on crossbar.” The Daily Beast got a little more poetic, meanwhile, declaring (at least, in the Google-safe version of their much more explicit main headline) “Olympic pole vaulter loses thanks to battle with his bulge,” while Out Magazine just went for it, writing “This Olympic pole vaulter’s own huge pole got in his way—and cost him a medal.” Oh, and LADBible fulfilled what we have to assume were some very specific SEO goals with “Olympic pole vaulter failed to clear target height after surprising body part unfortunately caught bar.” (“Oh,” we’re sure Ammirati said to himself as the incident occurred. “How surprising!”)

But no one, we would assert—absolutely no one—even came close to matching the headline attached to a Metro.co.uk piece penned by James Goldman this morning. If we were the people who’d written and then hit publish on the headline “Pole vaulter’s Olympic dream shattered by his own penis,” no one in our life would ever stop hearing about it; it would appear on our tombstones, hopefully with some kind of hyperlink so people would understand the context. It just shows: Beauty really can grow out of heartbreak, provided your definitions of “beauty” are loose, and stupid, enough.

Context