Perth the best place to observe pole stars

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/perth- ... 48573.html

Perth the best place to observe pole stars

Jessica Halloran
February 27, 2007

THE world's top pole vaulters keep on moving to their corner of the Earth. All up, three of the world's elite pole vaulters have temporarily taken up residence in Perth to study the moves of world No.1 Steve Hooker and No.2 Paul Burgess.

A few weeks ago, American pair Brad Walker and Toby Stevenson arrived on Burgess's doorstep to train with him and his coach Alex Parnov. Before Christmas, Burgess hosted the 2003 world champion and Athens Olympic bronze medallist, Italy's Giuseppe Gibilisco. "Off the track, we're all fine," Burgess said. "But on it, it becomes war."

In the past year, the Australian duo have attracted more attention from their competitors than ever before, due to an outstanding European season, and eventually Burgess decided to open up his house and offer up his coach to his opponents.

"We are pretty confident in our program; in our abilities - we are not sort of trying to hide anything really," Burgess said. "They can come and try and do what we do if they want, but we still feel like we can beat them.

"I think at the moment everyone wants to beat us, because last year we ended up No.1 and No.2 in the world. Now we have targets on our backs. Which is fine. It's a good place to be, it's better that than no one thinking, caring or noticing who you are."

Burgess had a great 2006 European circuit highlighted by a win at the IAAF grand prix final in Stuttgart with a vault of 5.82 metres, while Hooker also enjoyed a top year, winning the Commonwealth Games gold with 5.80m. After Melbourne, he joined Burgess in Perth to work with Parnov and then toured Europe successfully.

Six metres could be cleared in Melbourne for the first time on Friday at the Telstra A-Series meeting, which is also the first event of the IAAF World Athletics Tour.

Burgess, fellow Australian Dmitri Markov and Americans Walker and Stevenson have all cleared that mark at some point of their careers. "That'll be funny that there's five people and Steve has the lowest PB," Burgess said. "That will be one of the biggest comps of all time."

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 88,00.html

Stars aim for six-metre high club
Damian Barrett
February 28, 2007 12:00am
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STEVE Hooker owns the title of world-best pole vaulter.

However it is something he doesn't possess that will drive him through this year's events, starting with Friday night's Melbourne leg of the Telstra A-Series.
"I'd rather be known as a man who has jumped six metres, (than ranked No. 1 in the world)," Hooker said yesterday.

"That's what every vaulter growing up aims to do and hopefully I can do it in the next few months.

"I'm a Melbourne boy at heart and my friends and family will be here on Friday night.

"I'd love it to happen here and I hope it does."

Hooker's best is 5.96m. Competing against him on Friday will be four men who have cleared 6m.

The pole vault at Olympic Park will include the world's top-three ranked pole vaulters: Hooker, fellow Australian Paul Burgess and American Brad Walker.

Added to the mix will be world No. 6 Toby Stevenson (US), silver medallist at the Athens Olympics, and Australian Dmitri Markov, the 2001 world champion.

Track promoter Maurie Plant said the Melbourne pole vault contained arguably the highest-quality line-up assembled in Australia.

"This is one of the best events we have ever had in Australia," Plant said. "Not just the world rankings these guys have, but they are all in shape, and that is very important.

"They are all ready to go, they are all taking in some very good form and they all want to jump high here."

Hooker, the Commonwealth and World Cup champion, said he had maintained form from his ground-breaking 2006.

"I feel like I've put together a number of good seasons and I've been building up towards some big results in the next two years," he said.

Burgess, winner of the IAAF World Athletics final in 2006, said the Americans would provide welcome competition.

"We don't want the American guys coming over here thinking they can beat us in our own country," Burgess said.

"I jumped 5.91m earlier in the year, and I've jumped a few 5.80s, so six metres is just around the corner.

"I'm not so intimidated by it any more."

World Athletics Tour, Olympic Park, Friday 7.45pm. Tickets: phone 132 849

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 22,00.html

Flying machines the main event
Ron Reed
February 28, 2007 12:00am

IT'S spectacular, dangerous and has been part of the Olympics since the Games were re-invented in 1896 -- but the pole vault has never really been a headline act in Australian athletics.

Finally, that's changed.
That will be confirmed on Friday night when Australia's biggest annual track-and-field meeting, the Telstra A-Series, will feature the two top-ranked vaulters in the world -- and they're both Australian.

And it won't be a mere exhibition, either.

Melbourne's Steve Hooker, 24, and Perth's Paul Burgess, 27, will take on Americans Brad Walker, 25, and Toby Stevenson, 30, who are ranked third and sixth in the world.

The quartet promised yesterday that a serious international rivalry would guarantee an intense contest.

They will be joined by Dmitry Markov, the former Belarussian who won the world title for Australia in 2001 after taking silver two years earlier.

Athletics circles are buzzing with the rumour that Markov, 31, will then retire.

If so, that will constitute full circle -- happily so -- for a story that generated plenty of negativity, even hostility, when it began a decade ago.

Markov, his world-renowned coach Alex Parnov and two young athletes named Victor Chistiakov and Tatiana Grigorieva moved to Australia in 1997 in search of a new life in and out of athletics.

Markov and Chistiakov filled two of the three spots in the Australian team at the Sydney Olympics, each finishing equal fifth.

Although a novice who had switched from the track, Grigorieva won silver in the first women's vault held at Olympic level, became a media darling and, for a while, Chistiakov's wife.

At the outset, though, there was much muttering among the incumbent male vaulters about what they saw as an invasion that would prove to be a disincentive for locals.

Some walked away, never to compete again.

Not among the grumblers, though, was Burgess, then the junior world champion.

Wisely, he decided to see what he could learn from Parnov himself -- and ended up as the third man for Sydney. He is now a world-beater, having reached the six-metre barrier that separates the good from the great.

Hooker followed him into the Parnov camp and, thanks to superior consistency, holds the No. 1 ranking even though he has yet to crack the "big six". He is also the Commonwealth Games gold medallist.

So, far from being a downer, the arrival of the Europeans has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

Hooker confirmed that when asked why he and Burgess were now the best in the business.

Simple, he said -- it was the quality of the coaching.

"It is such a technical event that coaches have a big impact," he said.

Burgess said that because there was now some hype associated with the event, kids were attracted to it.

This is not surprising -- it has a lot of the elements of great spectator sport, including danger.

Vaulters landing badly from the height of a second-storey balcony have been seriously injured and even killed.

That's why the poles, like cigarette packets, carry a printed warning that vaulting can be hazardous to your health, and why Stevenson competes in a helmet.

Known as "Crash", he said: "It's not a gimmick -- I just want to be safe."

Hooker said: "So much drama unfolds. It's always surrounded by a crowd because it's such an exciting event."



Cool picture: http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata ... 042,00.jpg

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Sky's the limit when 6m giants fly
Jenny McAsey
February 28, 2007
THEY have been sleeping in the same house and sharing tips on the training track but when it comes to competition on Friday night, Australian pole vaulters Steve Hooker and Paul Burgess will not be showing friendly faces to American rivals Brad Walker and Toby Stevenson.
Hooker, the world No.1, and Burgess, ranked two, take on Walker (No.3) and Stevenson (No.6) at the IAAF World Tour meeting in Melbourne in what should be the highest-quality vaulting competition held in Australia.
Burgess, Walker and Stevenson have all cleared the elusive six-metre barrier, as has Australian Dmitri Markov, who will also compete in Melbourne. Only 12 men have jumped 6m or higher, and four of them will be on the runway at Olympic Park.

Hooker is the odd man out, with a personal best of 5.96m, but he is ranked above them on the strength of his brilliant 2006 season, in which he won the Commonwealth Games gold medal and the IAAF World Cup.

Not even at the Sydney Olympics were there five athletes in the pole vault field with these high-flying credentials. It will be a lively competition, too, as the daredevils of athletics perform their aerial acrobatics.

Stevenson, the silver medallist at the 2004 Athens Olympics, is known as the Cat in the Hat, or Crash, because of the skateboard-style helmet he has worn since his parents insisted on it when he started vaulting as a child.

"I wear it because the ground hurts when you land on it," Stevenson said as he warmed up for a training session.

"The truth is, there are a couple of bones in your body you can't break or it is bad news, and your head is one of them, so I might as well be smart and protect what little brain cells I have left."

Stevenson and Walker have been in Australia for two weeks, practising in Perth, where Burgess and Hooker train at facilities considered a paradise for pole vaulting.

Stevenson said that stint had them in good shape.

"I am capable of whatever it takes to beat these guys, and unfortunately these guys are pretty good so it is going to be pretty high," he said.

"I have no doubt someone will be taking shots at 6m."

Hooker, a lanky Melburnian with a cheeky grin, won't be satisfied until he joins the 6m club. "I will win here on Friday. I always jump well here, I am confident and feel like the hometown advantage has got to give you 5 or 10 per cent," Hooker said.

It is a compliment to the Australians that Walker and Stevenson have come to inspect their training conditions and work with their revered Perth-based coach, Alex Parnov.

Burgess, rather than shunning his rivals, has let the Americans stay at his house for a month.

"We are not really intimidated by them in that way," he said. "We feel like we are better than them so we have nothing to hide."

Walker showed that he liked the set-up by jumping a world-leading 5.92m in Perth last Friday, beating Burgess. And Burgess didn't lock him out of home that night.

"There is a pretty big rivalry," Walker said. "Everybody talks about how good friends we are off the track, but what gets a little buried underneath is that we are pretty big rivals on the track."

Walker likes the conditions in Perth so much he is considering coming back for extended training stints of up to three months at a time, with more coaching input from Parnov.

"I would be leaving rainy conditions and jumping indoors to (come to) hot conditions and jumping outdoors, and it makes a lot of sense," said Walker, who is the world indoor champion and was silver medallist at the 2005 world championships.

"I have trained by myself for six years, so if I were to come down ... it would just elevate our training level so much higher and give us more chance to go for 6.16m (a world record)."

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http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/ame ... 24239.html

American vaulter jumps at opportunity to train in the West

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Len Johnson
February 28, 2007
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A WEEK in Perth has been enough to convince Brad Walker he would like to spend more time there.

The American finished a short stay in Perth with a 5.92-metre vault last Friday, will go back west for a fortnight after competing in Friday night's Melbourne A-series meeting and the national championships in Brisbane the following week, and will investigate the possibility of an extended stay.

Steve Hooker and Paul Burgess, the Australian pair ranked one and two in the world last year, are based in Perth. Walker says their set-up is close to ideal. Alex Parnov, who coaches Hooker and Burgess, is a "super coach", training conditions are ideal, and the medical and para-medical support is first-rate, Walker said. He had not discussed the idea of an extended stay with Parnov yet, and would be unlikely to make any major changes in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, but Walker made it clear Perth is pretty close to pole vault heaven right now.

Heaven can wait, however. On Friday night, something quite close to it will be on display at Olympic Park. Nine men who are still active in the sport have cleared six metres. Four of them â€â€

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Craziness and the art of flying
Ron Reed
March 02, 2007 12:00am

NEEDLESS to say, some unusual skills are involved in becoming a world-beater at a sport which involves flying six metres into the air and then falling to earth unscathed, even with the help of a soft-landing pad.

A certain fearlessness must help.
"Either that or you have to be crazy," says American pole vaulter Toby Stevenson, who comes across as a bit of both.

Having mastered one of the most difficult techniques in any sporting textbook, Stevenson has also acquired another field of expertise.

He knows which airlines use which aircraft and the specifications of the various cargo holds.

He has learned this so that when he checks in with his cumbersome and odd-looking luggage -- a package of eight poles, five metres long -- he knows whether he'll win or lose the inevitable argument with the guy who tags the bags.

That happens often?

"Always," he sighs. "Every time -- unless you've rung the airline in advance, and even then it can still happen.

"They say, 'Sir, that won't fit', and then I have to tell them that it will, and do it in such a way that I don't sound as if I'm telling them how to do their job.

"I now check what sort of plane I'll be flying on when I book my ticket."

Most vaulters have horror stories about this.

Melbourne's Steve Hooker recently returned from America and found his poles had disappeared in transit.

They turned up at the home of a lady in California.

Stevenson carries eight at a time, two short ones for warm-up and six of varying lengths for competition. They cost about $1000 each, although when you're at his level -- he's the silver medallist from the Athens Olympics and ranked sixth in the world -- the makers supply them for free.

Stevenson uses another item of equipment that is a bit easier to carry around -- a helmet.

His mother, who was married to a vaulter and knows it is a risky sport, made him wear one as a kid -- and to the bemusement of his peers, he's still doing it.

"She's a mean one -- I'd rather wear it than face her wrath," he said, laughing.

But in all seriousness, he is conscious of the dangers.

"I just want to be safe."

As a result, he is known as "the cat in the hat" or simply "crash", which fits his image as one of track and field's more colourful characters.

Originally from Texas, he now lives in California.

Although he chooses to do without a coach -- "I don't trust anyone else with my jumping" -- he can do the business, too, having reached the six-metre barrier that defines the very good vaulters.

He brings all of this to Olympic Park tonight, where he will be part of the classiest pole vault competition Australia has seen outside the Olympics.

He and fellow American Brad Walker will take on Hooker and Perth veteran Paul Burgess, now the top two in the world. Also in the field will be former world champion Dmitri Markov, competing for the last time.

Local athletics is still getting its head around Australia leading the world in a discipline in which it has little history, but the former Belarusian Olympian is one of the men to thank.

He and his celebrated coach Alex Parnov moved here a decade ago and took it to another level. The results will be spectacularly on show tonight.

Markov says he intends to bow out with a win. Regardless of whether that happens, he certainly deserves a vote of thanks.