Biography
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. Holm married Anna in 2005 and they have a son, Melwin, born in 2004.
Holm, who is trained by his father, has not always been a high jumper. For many of his childhood years, Holm played football (following in the footsteps of his father, who was at that time a goalkeeper in a local fourth division team). It was not until 1991 when he realized that he had more potential as a high jumper than a footballer.
His inspiration for high-jumping was when at 8 years old he saw 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 (7ft 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 (7ft 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 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).
Holm finished 4th at the 2008 Summer Olympics with a leap of 2.32 m. On 13 September 2008 he announced his retirement from the sport. Holm ended his 20-year career with a second place at the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart.
Holm is the one of two jumpers to have cleared 2.40 m indoors since Javier Sotomayor (the other being Ivan Ukhov) - outdoors this has also been achieved by Vyacheslav Voronin.
He returned to high jump competition in 2010 for a charity event: the Auto Lounge Comeback competition in Sweden. As his main rival Patrik Sjöberg had a knee injury, Holm agreed to jump off his wrong foot to even the score. He beat Sjöberg in the wrong-footed faceoff and went back to his normal takeoff to jump 2.15 m for third behind Ukhov and Donald Thomas.
Holm lives in Karlstad, Sweden, and competed for Kils AIK. He is an avid fan of Färjestads BK, a Swedish Elite League ice hockey team, and also IF Björklöven in the third division.
Read more about this topic: Stefan Holm
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