Rest assured Hooker will improve leaps and bounds

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/rest-a ... 40774.html

Rest assured Hooker will improve leaps and bounds


Reaching new heights … pole vaulter Steve Hooker, who competes at the Olympic trials in Brisbane tonight.
Photo: Steve Christo


Jessica Halloran
February 29, 2008

IT WAS late afternoon last month and the wind was sweet for pole vaulting. With a strong, warm tailwind blowing, Steve Hooker cleared six metres, becoming only the 15th man in world to do so.

When he fell to the mat that last weekend in January he didn't feel too elated. Hooker believed jumping six metres was a matter of course on the way to his main goal of winning a Beijing Olympics gold medal in August.

"I wasn't super ecstatic," he said. "It wasn't the most ecstatic I've ever been."

Hooker cleared 6.00m in front of just a smattering of people at an inter-club meeting at the old Perry Lakes Stadium in Perth. Twenty people watch him soar into the six-metre club, and most of them were competitors.

Before that jump, things had not been going well for Hooker. His energy was lacking and his poles lay idle as he tried to recover from glandular fever last December.

After returning from the European season last September, Hooker had thrown himself into training and everything was going well - but then he became sick.

"Everything was going to plan until early December," he explained. "And that's when I began to feel run down and just shattered."

The doctor ordered him off training. So he took a week's break, but "it wasn't enough".

So Hooker rested more, barely training, then he came back.

"In the first week of January, I just started doing a little bit of training, just little bit of vaulting," he said.

"And then over that three-week period, I just decided to jump at the inter-club meet that last weekend in January. And it [the six-metre jump] just happened."

Technical changes he made to his run-up and grip last year had finally paid off.

"My run-up is a lot better," Hooker said. "I still get a bit shaky when conditions aren't great. But I am getting a lot more consistency in my performances."

Hooker always felt he was destined for great heights.

"After I jumped it, I felt I was still in the process of building something," he said.

"It's something I felt has been due for a little while. It felt good to get it out of the way rather than feeling ecstatic about it."

Hooker, who will vault at the Olympic trials in Brisbane tonight, will be ecstatic should he win gold in Beijing.

After holding the world No.1 ranking last year, expectations are high for success in Beijing. The 25-year-old said he had learnt from his disappointing performance at the world championships in Osaka last year, where he faltered in the final.

"Osaka was a missed opportunity for me," Hooker said. "But I think I've learnt more from losing in Osaka than I would have if I had won there. I came back to Australia, I put my head down and worked hard. The mistakes that I made in Osaka, I have learnt from them."

But the Olympics have not entered his mind yet. "It's so far off that I'm not even really thinking about it. However, I do want to get there and be on autopilot."