Aussie duo most underrated sport stars

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http://www.examiner.com.au/story.asp?id=376053


Under the radar
*LOGO:BRIAN ROE, TALKING SPORT * , Sunday, 17 December 2006


Australian champion pole vaulters Steve Hooker and Paul Burgess ... quietly going about their sport unnoticed.

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Pole vault pair dominate on the world stage
WHO are Australia's most under-rated sports stars was the question asked on Melbourne radio station, SEN, last week.



Listeners quickly responded with a long list of worthy cases, quite rightly including the men's and women's national hockey teams, among many others. But not a single caller mentioned Australian pole vaulters Steve Hooker and Paul Burgess, which probably emphasises even further just how under-appreciated they are.



Yet the two Perth-based athletes are the current numbers one and two in the world in the most technically demanding of track and field events.



In a year when three major international championships were on offer to Australians in track and field, these two managed to garner all three - Hooker the Commonwealth Games and the World Cup and Burgess the world athletics final.



They were the dominant vaulters on the world tour this year, picking up victories in Golden League and Grand Prix almost at will. Rarely have two Australian athletes in the same event quite so dominated an international season.



But both are much more than stars on the international athletics circuit. While taking quite different paths to their success, each has demonstrated that you can mix high performance with life preparation.



Burgess was an early starter, winning a national gymnastics medal at 13 and then after switching vaulting horse to vaulting pole, the world junior championship for under 20 athletes in Sydney in 1996 just after his 17th birthday.



Disappointment came two years later when at his second world juniors, the best he could achieve was a shared bronze medal, although he picked up the first of two Commonwealth Games silvers later that year in Kuala Lumpur.



But the young man known to most in the sport by his nickname, Budgie, showed real character, when he was virtually the only man among Australia's top vaulters who remained in the sport when "the Russians," Dmitri Markov and Viktor Chistiakov migrated to our shores.



When it appeared all too hard for the others, he alone stuck it out, determined that he could make every Australian team from there on, no matter who else was putting their hand up for selection.



Following the trend at the time, Burgess had left school at 16 to be a full-time athlete. He subsequently formed the view that such ideas were misplaced, completing year 12 at night school and then undertaking a university degree.



Three years younger, Hooker, despite a more athletic pedigree - his mother Erica and father Bill both having represented Australia at international level, was a later starter, making his first impression with a surprise fourth place at the 2000 world juniors in Chile.



Hooker is regarded as relentless in his pursuit of success, taking on a degree and a professional traineeship, while rising to become the world number one.



Undaunted by how much he took on, he also moved from Melbourne to Perth to train with Burgess under their coach Alex Parnov. Despite achieving good results under his original coach, Mark Stewart, Hooker felt that a more conducive training environment might deliver that little bit extra he needed in his drive to the top of the world rankings. He was right.



There is much to be appreciated about these two fine Australian sportsmen.