Stefan Holm
Stefan Christian Holm (born 25 May 1976) is a retired Swedish high jumper. He has won an Olympic gold medal, a silver in the World Championships, and one silver and one bronze medal in the European Championships. His personal records are 2.37 m (7 ft 9.3in) (outdoors, set 2008) and 2.40 m (7 ft 10.49in) (indoors, set 2005).
Holm was born in Forshaga, the son of father Johnny and mother Elisabeth. He has a sister named Veronica who is three years older than he is. Holm married Anna Lycke in 2005 and had a son, Melwin, who was born in 2004.
Holm, who was trained by his father, hadn't always been a high jumper. For many of his childhood years, Holm played football. It was not until 1991 when he realized that he had much more potential as a high jumper than a football player.
His inspiration for high-jumping began when he was 8 years old. He saw a Swedish high-jumping legend, and former world-record holder, Patrik Sjöberg, compete on television.
Holm's big breakthrough onto the world athletics scene came in 2000, when he finished 4th at the Sydney Olympics with a leap of 2.32m (7 ft 7.34in). 24 years old at the time, Holm had been high jumping for over half of his life.
He set an indoor personal best of 2.36 (7 ft 8.91in) in 2003 to win the Hochsprung mit Musik meeting, and managed to reach the same height outdoors the following year while winning the Internationales Hochsprung-Meeting Eberstadt. In 2004, Holm won the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens with a jump of 2.36 and was awarded the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal.
Holm has the distinction of jumping 2 m or higher in six different techniques. With his height, being only 1.81 m, he shares the unofficial World Record of height jumped above own height (59 cm) with USA's 1970s jumper Franklin Jacobs. In 1993 he participated in a decathlon where he jumped higher in the high jump (2.04 m) than in the pole vault (2.00 m).
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