Pyrek is Petrov’s pupil too
Friday 5 March 2004
Despite a tough season pole vaulter Monika Pyrek, 23, still won the title of best Polish Female Athlete in 2003. Her victory was gained thanks to her bronze medal in Birmingham’s World Indoor Championships in March 2003 - at which she jumped 4.45m - and her fourth place in the World Championships in Paris (equal with Stacy Dragila) after clearing 4.55 on her third attempt.
Tough start in the Pole Vault
Pyrek’s athletics career began at school when Boguslawa Klimaszewska a jumping events coach replaced her usual P.E. teacher, and he asked the best pupils to come to the nearby athletics club. Before that day Pyrek had been playing in the school volleyball and basketball team but with the change of teacher she began training for the High Jump. In those early days there was no way to induce her to do the Pole Vault, after she sustained lots of bruises after her first tentative attempt.
However, after a year at high jumping the influence of the best Polish Pole Vault coach Edward Szymczak finally persuaded her to take up the event, and led to her first national record on 18 May 1996, a height of 3.20m after just a year of training. Pyrek owes a lot to the charismatic Szymczak, the famous coach of Olympic champion Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz and the Kolasa’s brothers.
Record number of Polish records and (almost) one European
Later Pyrek was to break Polish records very often. Her last outdoors – set on 23 August 2002 in London was her 40th outdoor. No other Polish athlete has set so many records in one event. Unfortunately she could not be pleased with her European record of 4.61 obtained during the National Championships on 1 July 2001 in Bydgoszcz. It was the best ever European outdoor result, but some time earlier the EAA began considering indoor results which were better than their outdoor equivalent, as the official record (as the IAAF does worldwide).
Pyrek achieved her biggest international success so far at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton winning the bronze medal with the result of 4.50m.
After the Olympic Games in Sydney the previous year she had been training more often with Vyacheslav Kalinichenko, Ukrainian assistant of Szymczak, and when Kalinichenko was offered a job in Szczecin she also decided to move.
Studies on hold for the Olympic Games
After last summer’s Paris World Championships she decided not to undertake the last year of studies at the faculty of Law and Public Management of Gdansk University, instead concentrating only on her preparations for the Olympic Games.
However she is preparing a very interesting MA thesis entitled “Law and administrational problems of fighting against doping in sport.â€Â
Pyrek is Petrov’s pupil too
Pyrek is Petrov’s pupil too
"You have some interesting coaching theories that seem to have little potential."
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