By Chip Le Grand
09mar06
Source
- WHEN Steve Hooker is at the top of the runway, 6m doesn't look so tough.
In quieter moments, when he is well away from the stadiums of Europe or the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it is enough to do his head in.
There is a part of Hooker that knows 6m is a massive height to clear, and something rarely done since the great Sergey Bubka propped up his pole for the last time.
He also knows it is only 9cm more than he vaulted the weekend, at a local meet in suburban Box Hill, after he had just disembarked from a three-hour flight.
"When you are off the track it is something you find difficult to comprehend," Hooker said yesterday.
"When you are out on the track and you are in competition, it is just another bar. You are not focusing on what the height is, you are just focusing on technically what it is you need to do. You take it the same as you would any other jump.
"It is a mind-set that a lot of people have. I have spent a bit of time with Tim Mack and Paul Burgess, the last two guys who have jumped it.
"To see someone you know and you have seen work day to day jump it, it is like: If these guys can jump it anyone can jump it."
Hooker realises how this might be interpreted, and he breaks off laughing.
American Mack and Perth-based Burgess, Hooker's friend and soon-to-be training partner, are certainly no slouches. Not everyone can jump 6m. Throughout athletics history, only 11 men have done so.
Yet the prospect of Hooker joining this elite company - the Bubka bunch, if you will - either tonight at the Telstra A-Series meet at Olympic Park or at the Commonwealth Games themselves, is very real.
While the men's pole vault won't have a strong international starting list at the Games, Australia is spoiled to have three genuine world-class competitors in its team.
Burgess was the only man to clear 6m in competition last year, and 2001 world champion Dmitri Markov has come as close to Bubka's 6.14m world record as any athlete before or since.
If the gold medal jump is not 6m at the Commonwealth Games, Hooker knows it won't be far off.
Not if his own form at last Saturday's Box Hill meet was any guide.
"My 5.91 jump was good and I feel like, if the bar had been at 6m when I jumped that, it would have been a clearance," he said. "I do feel like it is a possibility and I am in that sort of shape."
The Games will be Hooker's last competition under the care of long-term coach Mark Stewart.
At the end of last year's European season, Burgess shifted from Melbourne to Perth, where he will begin working with Alex Parnov.
The move means that three of Australia's four best vaulters - Burgess, Hooker and new national women's record-holder Kym Howe - will share the same training centre and coach.
Hooker is hoping a more competitive training environment will help push him into medal contention for Beijing in 2008.
"We are really competitive when we are on the track but off the track we are mates," he said of Burgess.
"My coach, Mark Stewart, hasn't been able to do long European seasons because he works full-time as a lecturer so, for the past two years, I have travelled with Paul and Alex through Europe.
"I'll room with Paul and spend most of my time with him. That is what has made the decision a little bit easier."
At 23, Hooker is still young for an elite pole vaulter. Yet, as with any track and field discipline, half the battle is reaching major competitions in good health.
Burgess missed last year's world championships with a calf strain and Markov has struggled with injury since 2001. Hooker, by contrast, has hardly missed a training session in two years.
"The last 2½years have been unbelievable," he said.
"I had a lot of injury problems with back and knees until then but the last two years I have spent three weeks off the track. I tore an abdominal muscle and that is it.
"I feel like I have got such a strong base that anything is possible. I really want to make sure I take full advantage of that over the next couple of weeks and jump what I am capable of."
