#ThrowbackThursday | WAIS World Champions
As the 2015 IAAF Athletics World Championships in Beijing draw near, we take a retrospective look at the two men – who through WAIS support – achieved the distinction, of pole vault world champion.
The 2001 men’s pole vault was considered a wide open event after the retirement of six time world champion, Sergey Bubka (UKR) and the injury to defending champion Maksim Tarasov (RUS). As a result, for the first time in World Championship history, the gold could go to an athlete competing from outside a former Soviet country.
Ironically, though, two of the contenders were in the form a Russian (Former Perth based WAIS athlete Dmitri Markov) and a Belarusian (Victor Chistiakov), now competing for their adopted Australia. In his first competition for his new country, Markov finished second at the IAAF World Championships in Seville (ESP) in 1999 and in doing so posted a new Australian record of 5.95m. His personal best, a magical 6.00m, was set while still competing for Belarus.
In Edmonton (CAN) in 2001 Markov successfully negotiated the qualifying round with a clearance at 5.70m. But disaster struck after the qualifying when he hit his foot on a table in his hotel room, aggravating an injury he had picked up in Germany, two months earlier. After the final Markov revealed the dramas he had endured to compete.
“My foot was sore,” he admitted, “I spent ten hours yesterday and another three hours today just icing it,” Markov said.
“I remember him the morning after he had kicked his foot, he could not stand,” Brent Kirkbride, Australian team physiotherapist, said.
With strapping and injections, he took to the field for the final with a strategy of minimum jumps.
He passed the first two heights and used only five jumps to win his first world title at 5.95m before continuing onward into the stratosphere with a 6.05m clearance, a height unprecedented in World Championships history.
Reigning Olympic champion (Beijing 2008) Steve Hooker, entered the 2009 Berlin World Championships with more in common with Markov, than simply the guidance of revered coach Alex Parnov – who oversaw both men’s titles.
Hooker too, entered competition under a serious injury cloud, and his efforts in claiming gold, almost defied logic. Hooker reacted with disbelief at his ‘luck’ in winning after a remarkable sequence of events.
It all began with a thigh injury suffered at the Australia team training camp in Cologne 12 days earlier, which had him rating his chances of contesting the final at only 50-50, and then left him grimacing in the qualifying round.
“I think potentially at these championships the gold is out of my reach,” Hooker said, after qualifying with just one jump. He was in obvious pain as he limped away from the mat.
Two days later he had the final and not knowing how his body would cope, he waited until the bar was raised to 5.65m. Still uncertain he continued to wait, until the bar reached 5.85m and he took his first attempt, narrowly missing it. With his competitors, Romain Mesnil and Renaud Lavillenie, who had come in at 5.50m, clear at 5.85m and 5.80m respectively, Hooker gambled and took his second attempt at 5.90m, and cleared, taking the gold with just two jumps in the final.
“Luckily for me, prior to this injury, I had done such fantastic training that I knew what great shape I was in. There was one specific training session in Leverkusen before I got hurt where, on the pole I jumped on today, I jumped 5.90m and so I knew I had it within me. I could go out with the confidence that I had the right pole and I had the right run-up. If I could just get down the runway it would be enough,” Hooker said.
“I was out there for an hour when everyone else was warming up and I was sitting around through that, so it seemed like a very long time. But, in a lot of ways, it probably worked in my favour. The French boys were very tired, I think, by the end and that probably just cost them a little bit. I was lucky I had this aggressive strategy but even more lucky that it paid off.
“There are three people who need a lot of recognition – that’s Shane Kelly, my physio, who I borrowed from the AIS, Adam Castricum, the team doctor who has definitely helped out a lot, and Alex Parnov, my amazing coach, who together with me came up with this radical, ridiculous plan than somehow has come off,” Hooker said after his success.
“It’s a mental battle that you have to fight with yourself and you have to convince yourself that you’re ready, you’re ready to pick up a massive competition pole that’s going to throw you nearly six metres in the air. You’ve got to convince yourself that you’re ready to do an aggressive jump with the stands very close in – and you’ve got to be prepared to take that risk.
“It has been a very, very challenging couple of weeks. I’ve tried to be as honest as possible with everyone throughout the process. Every day it has been a question of whether I jump or not and trying to sleep at night wasn’t the easiest thing. The people around me have made smart decisions and that’s what got me through.”
Alex Parnov continues to head the WAIS pole vault program at the Western Australian Institute of Sport and later this month, 18 year-old Nina Kennedy will make her senior world championship debut in China, months after breaking a junior world record at a track meet in Perth.
The IAAF World Championships run from August 22-30.
– with Athletics Australia (David Tarbotten)