Hooker is a Pole-less Vaulter

[rainbowgirl28]

I will never understand how airlines can LOSE pole vaulting poles.



http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story ... 5934c.html

At Millrose, a pole-less vaulter



Steve Hooker, the top-ranked pole vaulter in the world, with or without his pole, is waiting his turn at the Millrose Games press conference. He's antsy, fidgeting on his chair, swinging his legs, clasping and unclasping his fingers. He would rather, it is quite clear, be pounding down a runway, preparing to soar.
Hooker will make his first New York appearance at the Garden tomorrow night. Last Friday, in Boston, using a borrowed pole, he set a national indoor record - 19feet, three-quarters of an inch. A few days earlier he showed up at the airport in Perth, Australia, his home, and handed a baggage person a long case containing seven or eight of his poles. Really long.

Hooker's itinerary took him from Perth to Sydney to San Francisco to Boston, where he went to the baggage carousel and waited for his poles to show up. Still waiting.

"I just hope they're having a good time," he said, "because I really miss them."

Nah, he can't miss them all that much. Not after Hooker borrowed a pole from Jeff Hartwig, the former U.S. record-holder, to set his latest record. Luckily, these pole vaulters hang together - a "my pole is your pole" sort of thing - and Hartwig is in the Millrose field as well. So the pole in Hooker's hands won't be his pole, but at least it won't be a carbon-fiber stranger.

It's something like playing third base with a first baseman's mitt, or, as Hooker put it, "like moving the distances between hurdles. It affects your judgment."

On the other hand, Hooker prefers indoor vaulting. "You don't have to worry about judging the wind," he says. "No strong head winds, no tail winds." And now, no poles to take back to the hotel. And if he doesn't get as close to the ceiling as he'd like, hey, it's the pole's fault.

The pole, and the airline, which he didn't want to name because "I've still got a few free flights with them," he said. Someone wondered if the missing poles have taught him anything he can use later. He nodded. "The only lesson you can learn is, don't be a pole-vaulter. But it's a little too late for that."

Hooker, 24, first took to the sport 10 years ago. He was a regular at a Melbourne gym, trying "a little bit of everything, the 800, the high jump." His parents competed in the Commonwealth Games in the '70s - the long jump for his mother, the 800 for his father - and they encouraged him, he said, to try all the different sports. He doesn't know how much the track gene did for him. "They were just mum and dad," he said. So when he saw a world class vaulter practicing in the gym, he was intrigued. "I thought I would have the aptitude for it, and the right physique. I was a string bean. Other than that, I just thought I'd enjoy it."

But after he told his mother he was interested in the pole vault, she didn't start a fan club. She thought it was "scary," Hooker said. "That was the only issue."

The issue is close to disappearing. "Knowing what he has gone through to get to where he is," Erica Hooker said, "I feel enormous pride and respect - in bucketfuls. And I'm glad it's him out there and not me. Since Steve has become more confident and competent I am a little more relaxed. But it's still touch-and-go at times."

Which brings us back to the mystery of the missing poles. Was it the airline? Or was it mum?