Thursday, June 22, 2006
Bill Livingston
Plain Dealer Columnist
Source
- People today don't want to wait. Athletes, being action junkies, want their gratification faster than most. Especially in track and field, where if it moves, it is timed to the hundredth of a second or measured to the centimeter.
Then there is the pole vault. More than a half-hour often elapses between a fellow's attempts. A competition might last for four or five hours. The pole vault involves sudden, explosive bursts of activity, surrounded by the tedium of waiting. It would be like baseball, except there is no World Series every year to validate effort.
The Olympics come every four years, the World Championships every two. Neither occurs this year.
Instead, Westlake's Tim Mack competes in the USA Outdoor National Championship in Indianapolis on Saturday (ESPN2, 6-8 p.m.). The winner goes to the World Cup in Athens, Greece, in September, as one of only nine national and intercontinental fly boys worldwide.
Mack has not been in the Olympic Stadium since the weekend he won the gold medal on his third try in 2004 and set an Olympic record. He will return to the cradle of the Olympics and the summit of his career only if he wins Saturday, although an IAAF Super Grand Prix meet will be held there on July 3.
"I want to go back when I'm ready," Mack said. "I don't want to go back just for money."
The word "altius" ("higher" in Latin) in the Olympic motto was meant for Mack. Everything he has done this year has been to let him jump all the way to Beijing in 2008.
He is ranked 13th in the world, but he has the world's eighth-best jump this year - 18 feet, 10¼ inches. He cleared that in Zaragoza, Spain, in June, beating Germany's Tim Lobinger, ranked second in the world; The Netherlands' Rens Blom, third-ranked, as well as the reigning world champion; and Dmitri Markov, ranked 12th.
"Everybody wants to see you jump high, but it's a give-and- take this year," Mack said.
The St. Ignatius High School grad uate wants to stay healthy after a slow-healing calf injury sabotaged his 2005 season. He is fine going to Indy.
Mack has been following the program by which he peaked at the 2004 Olympic Trials. They were in mid-July in 2004, weeks later than the nationals. "I jumped 19 feet, 19-2, 19-4 before the Trials, but the timing is two or three weeks off this year. I'm having to rush to get ready. I'm starting to get on bigger poles and I'm feeling a lot better, though," he said.
Mack will be 34 in September, 36 by Beijing. Only Bob Richards, the guy on the Wheaties box decades ago, won two Olympic pole vault gold medals. Even Sergey Bubka, the greatest vaulter ever, won only one.
"I know I can't jump every day like I did when I was 23. But look at [former Indian] Julio Franco. He's still hitting home runs at [almost] 48 in the big leagues," Mack said.
With scrupulous periodization training now, which varies the volume and intensity of his workouts, he plans to brave the chop of the big air on the other side of the world two years from now.
His attitude is surely a strength, too. Mack holds the Olympics above the drug cheats and politics. He puts them on a plane where the best part of sports expresses itself in a language all mankind understands.
"The day I won was so special. I don't want to go back and only jump 18-4. I don't want to disrespect it. I want to break the stadium record," said Mack, who holds it.
To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
blivingston@plaind.com, 216-999-4672