Sergey Bubka
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Medal record
Sergey Bubka in 2007
Men's athletics
Olympic Games
Competitor for  Soviet Union
Gold	1988 Seoul	Pole vault
World Championships
Competitor for  Soviet Union
Gold	1983 Helsinki	Pole vault
Gold	1987 Rome	Pole vault
Gold	1991 Tokyo	Pole vault
Competitor for  Ukraine
Gold	1993 Stuttgart	Pole vault
Gold	1995 Gothenburg	Pole vault
Gold	1997 Athens	Pole vault
European Championships
Competitor for  Soviet Union
Gold	1986 Stuttgart	Pole vault

Sergey Nazarovich Bubka (Russian: Сергей Назарович Бубка; Ukrainian: Сергій Бубка - Serhiy Bubka; born December 4, 1963) is a retired Ukrainian pole vaulter. Repeatedly voted the world's best athlete,¹ he represented the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991.

Bubka won 6 consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympics gold and broke the world record for men's pole vaulting 35 times² (17 outdoor and 18 indoor records). He was the first to clear 6.0 metres and the first and only (as of October 2008) to clear 6.10 metres (20 ft).³⁴

He holds the current outdoor world record of 6.14 metres (20 feet 1 3/4 inches), set on 31 July 1994 in Sestriere, Italy⁵ and the current indoor world record of 6.15 meters, set on 21 February 1993 in Donetsk, Ukraine.⁶

Biography

Sergey Bubka was born and brought up in the city of Luhansk, Ukraine. His father was a soldier and his mother a medical assistant. He commented that neither of them were active in sports. He has an elder brother Vasiliy Bubka, who was also a pole vaulter.⁷ Vasiliy's personal best outdoors is 5.86 meters.⁴ Sergey had a ferocious competitive spirit which was channeled into multiple sports until he met the pole vault coach Vitaly Petrov. Bubka started pole vaulting at the age of 11, when he entered Dynamo Children and Youth Sports School in Voroshilovgrad, he was trained by Vitaly Petrov there.⁸ In 1978, aged 15, Bubka moved to Donetsk, Ukraine, with his coach for better training facilities.

Pole vaulting career

Sergey Bubka entered international athletics in 1981 participating in the European Junior Championships where he reached 7th place. But the 1983 World Championships held in Helsinki proved to be his actual entry point to the mainstream world athletics, where a relatively unknown Bubka snatched the gold, clearing 5.70 metres (18 feet 8 inches). The years that followed witnessed the unparalleled dominance of Bubka, with him setting new records and standards in pole vaulting.

He set his first world record of 5.85m on 26 May 1984 which he improved to 5.88m a week later, and then to 5.90m a month later. He cleared 6.00 metres (19 feet 8 inches) for the first time on 13 July 1985 in Paris.⁴ This height had long been considered unattainable. With virtually no opponents, Bubka improved his own record over the next 10 years until he reached his career best and the current world record of 6.14 m (20 feet 1 3/4 inches) in 1994.

He was the first (and as of October, 2008, the only) athlete ever to jump over 6.10 metres, in San Sebastián, Spain in 1991. He set the current world record of 6.14 metres in 1994 after some commentators had already predicted the decline of the great sportsman. Bubka increased the world record by 21 centimetres (8 inches) in the 4 years between 1984 and 1988, more than other pole vaulters had achieved in the previous 12 years. He cleared 6.00 meters or better on more than 44 occasions.

Bubka officially retired from his pole vault career in 2001. His son Sergei Bubka Jr. is a tennis player and is currently a regular in ATP's second string circuits.⁹

IAAF World Championships

Bubka won the pole vault event in 6 consecutive IAAF World Championships In Athletics from 1983 to 1997:

Olympics curse

Though he had complete dominance on pole vaulting at his time, he was highly unlucky in the Olympic Games. The first Olympics after his introduction into international athletics was in 1984, which was boycotted by the USSR along with the other Eastern Bloc countries. Two months before the games he vaulted 12 cm higher than the eventual Olympic gold medal winner Pierre Quinon. In 1988 Bubka entered the Seoul Olympics and won his only Olympic gold medal. In 1992 he failed to clear in his first 3 attempts and was out of the Barcelona Olympics. At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 a heel injury caused him to withdraw from the competition without making even one jump. In 2000 at the Sydney Olympics he was eliminated from the final after three attempts at 5.70 m.¹⁰

World record progression by Bubka

Bubka broke the world record for men's pole vaulting a total of 35 times in his career.² He broke the outdoor world record 17 times and the indoor world record 18 times. The fact that most of the time the record he improved was his own demonstrates his absolute dominance in the event. Exactly how high he could have jumped at his best is unknown: because of the large prizes on offer from event promoters for breaking world records, the majority of his world record attempts were made at 1 cm higher than the existing record, and once achieved, he would not attempt another record jump until the next opportunity to collect a prize, even after a substantial clearance showing he could have achieved a higher height.

Statue "Serhij Bubka", Donetsk

Technique

Bubka possessed enormous strength, speed and gymnastic abilities.² Reportedly his average speed during pole vaulting approach was 35.7 km/h (9.9 m/s, 22.2 mph). He gripped the pole higher than most vaulters to get extra leverage, though Bubka himself played down the effect of grip alone.⁷ Bubka had great strength and could use a relatively heavier pole for his weight for generating more recoil force.

Along with these, his development and mastery of the Petrov/Bubka technical model is also considered as the key to his success. A technical model is a sequence of positions and pressures that describe the method and form of a style of pole vaulting. The Petrov/Bubka model is superior to many others today because it allows the vaulter to continuously put energy into the pole while constantly rising towards the bar. While most of the conventional models focus on heavy planting of the pole to the landing pad to create maximum bend in the pole even before they leave the ground, Petrov/Bubka model concentrates on driving the pole up rather than bending it while planting it on the landing pad. While the traditional models depended on the recoil by bending the pole, Petrov/Bubka model could exploit the recoil of the pole and it could exert more energy on the pole during the swinging action.

Awards and positions held

• Bubka won the Prince of Asturias Award in Sports in 1991.
• Bubka was awarded best sportsman of the Soviet Union for three years in a row from 1984 to 1986
• Bubka was voted Sportsman of the Year for 1997 by the influential newspaper L'Équipe
• Bubka was honored as the best pole vaulter of the last half century by Track & Field News
• Bubka was designated as an IAAF council member in 2001
• He is currently serving as the president of National Olympic Council (NOC) of Ukraine and is an IOC member¹¹
• Bubka was designated UNESCO Champion for Sport in 2003¹²
• From 2002 to 2006, he had been a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and its committee on questions of youth policy, physical culture, sport and tourism.
• Completed his term in IOC athletes commission in Aug 08 ¹³

Quotes

• "I love the pole vault because it is a professor's sport. One must not only run and jump, but one must think. Which pole to use, which height to jump, which strategy to use. I love it because the results are immediate and the strongest is the winner. Everyone knows it. In everyday life that is difficult to prove."¹⁴ - Sergey Bubka
• "Here is a man who has personally altered his art form, changed the way competitors prepare for it and perform it, even the way spectators perceive it." - Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated about Bubka
• "My jump was imperfect, my run-in was too short and my hands were too far back at takeoff. When I manage to iron out these faults, I am sure I can improve." - In an interview after he was the first person to break 20 feet.

Bibliography

Sergey Bubka (1987). An Attempt is Reserved (in Russian). Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya. 

References

1. ^ International Olympic Committee. "Mr. Sergey BUBKA". Official website of the Olympic Movement. Retrieved on 2008-07-13. "...voted world's best athlete on several occasions."
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Bubka says farewell". BBC News. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.
3. ^ "Top Lists: Pole Vault". IAAF.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-29. (Indoor)
4. ^ ^{a b c} "Top Lists: Pole Vault". IAAF.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-29. (Outdoor)
5. ^ "World Outdoor Records - Men". IAAF.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-27.
6. ^ "World Indoor Records - Men". IAAF.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-27.
7. ^ ^{a b} "On the Road to Atlanta". The Ukrainian Weekly (1996-06-02). Retrieved on 2007-08-27.
8. ^ Sergey Bubka - A Man With A Pole
9. ^ "Bubka takes to tennis". New Age Sports. Agence France-Presse, New Delhi. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.
10. ^ "Sydney 2000 results". IAAF.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.
11. ^ "IOC > Members > Sergey Bubka". Official Website of the Olympic Movement. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.
12. ^ "Ukrainian athlete Serhiy Bubka designated UNESCO Champion for Sport". Unesco.org (2003-11-04). Retrieved on 2007-08-27.
13. ^ "Fredericks succeeds Bubka as chairman of IOC's Athletes Commission".
14. ^ Sergey Bubka to Gary Smith in Sports Illustrated, September 14, 1988, referenced in "Current Biography Excerpts: Track and Field". HW Wilson. Retrieved on 2007-08-26.

External links

• Sergey Bubka's Official Site
• IAAF profile for Sergey Bubka
• A small video with the highlights of Bubka's career
• http://www.neovault.com/articles_bubka_speaks.asp
• Masters T&F Pole Vault All-Time Rankings

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Ben Johnson	Men's Track & Field Athlete of the Year 1988	Succeeded by Roger Kingdom
Preceded by Stefan Edberg	United Press International Athlete of the Year 1991	Succeeded by Kevin Young
Preceded by Michael Johnson	Men's Track & Field Athlete of the Year 1991	Succeeded by Kevin Young
Sporting positions
Preceded by Thierry Vigneron	Men's Pole Vault Best Year Performance 1984 – 1989	Succeeded by Rodion Gataullin
Preceded by Rodion Gataullin	Men's Pole Vault Best Year Performance 1991 – 1994	Succeeded by Okkert Brits
Preceded by Okkert Brits	Men's Pole Vault Best Year Performance 1996 – 1997	Succeeded by Jeff Hartwig