Sergei Bubka was one of a kind
They say it is lonely at the top.
Imagine going through your options of sports as a kid, liking one, choosing it, and then becoming successful in it. It is a dream very few people manage to have; more fall apart than succeed. Of the many who succeed, there are a few who have a problem even after the success. It is the problem of being lonely at the top. They become so good that hardly anyone can beat them.
While it is a good problem to have, it still needs a solution. The only solution is to be your own competitor and aim to beat yourself. There aren’t many with this problem, but one such athlete was Sergei Bubka.
Bubka was born in Luhansk, Ukraine, an unrecognised republic in Ukraine that is in the centre of a bitter war these days. He started out in athletics as a long jumper and a 100-metre runner. When he was 9 years old, he found interest in Pole Vault. Valery Petrov, who would go on to coach three Pole Vault world champions took young Sergei under his tutelage.
The first success came in 1983, when Bubka virtually won the world gold at the 1983 world track-and-field championships in Helsinki, Finland, with a vault of 5.7 metres (18 feet, 8.25 inches).
On May 26, 1984, at the age of 21, Bubka broke the world record of 5.83m , then held by Thierry Vigneron by jumping 5.85 m in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.
His partnership with coach Petrov further strengthened his grip on the sport. They would continuously innovate, trying different kinds of poles and unusual styles of jumping. A style of jumping called the Petrov model was one of the variations Bubka used extensively. It involved a change in the way the athlete gathered momentum after the initial rock-back as the pole uncoiled after being pitched. They would also try our different grips on the pole to try and maximise the launching force. Bubka’s technical proficiency and body strength meant that many of the variations could even be copied by others in the field.
The world beater emerges
What was to follow as the years rolled by was stuff that makes legends. Over a period of 10 eventful years, Bubka ruled the world of pole vaulting. It was not just an accident by any means. A punishing training schedule and unwavering focus on sharpening his talent kept Bubka in front of everyone else.
In the next three months, he broke the record three times, increasing it to 5.94 by August 31st. On the same day, Vigneron had broken Bubka’s record from the month of July but was to lose it again in a few minutes as Bubka promptly broke it again.
In the year that followed, he achieved what was considered unattainable: a jump of 6 metres in an outdoor pole vault. In the next 10 years, with no one to challenge him, Bubka broke his own records to take it from the initial 5.84 to an astounding 6.14. The record remained unsurpassed until 2014, a good 13 years after he retired in 2001.
In a career that was nothing short of a fairytale, he won the World Championships six times. At the Olympics, however, he had a sort of curse. Russia’s boycott in 1984 in Los Angeles kept him out of the Olympics that year. He won his only gold at Seoul in 1988. In the 1992 and 2000 Olympics, he was eliminated. This is a pretty average record for a legend of Bubka’s stature.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Bubka’s career was in his ability to break his own world records multiple times. His innovative and aggressive approach to the sport, coupled with a technical proficiency that set him apart, allowed him to raise the bar continually. Bubka shattered the world record a staggering 35 times throughout his career, 17 of them indoors and 18 of them outdoors.
His highest was an astonishing 6.14 metres, achieved in 1994. It took twenty years before it could be beaten. In 2014, Renaud Lavillenie jumped 6.16 metres and caught up with the legend.
While many athletes have graced the field and earned a name and a few records for themselves, Sergei Bubka is in a league of his own.
Competing against himself, beating his own world records, and setting a record for beating records, Bubka will remain a legend whose feats are unsurpassable. He was not just the greatest pole vaulter ever but probably one of the best athletes the world has seen.
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Pretty much the only name in the sport that a commoner knew during 90s