Lukyanenko- Preparing for greatness in Hooker's shadow.

[chasing6]

Lukyanenko - 'surpassing expectations'
http://www.iaaf.org/WCH09/news/kind=103/newsid=50115.html

Since 22 August last year the world has only really talked about one male pole vaulter Australia’s Steve Hooker who on that day in Beijing rose dramatically with third time clearances at four consecutive heights to an Olympic gold and a peak of 5.96m, a Games’ record.

Hooker’s ascent to stardom halted the meteoric rise of Russia’s now 24-year-old Yevgeniy Lukyanenko, who battled with the Australian up to 5.85m, a ceiling at which he had to be satisfied with the silver.

Until the Beijing final it had been Lukyanenko, who a few weeks before the Olympics had soared to a PB of 6.01m in Bydgoszcz (1 July), who had been the surprise vaulting package of 2008.

Nobody had expected Lukyanenko to win at the 2008 World Indoor Championships in Valencia. Before that competition his best major championship achievement had been a promising 6th place at the World Championships in Osaka the previous summer.

After his sudden success in Valencia when he beat 2007 World champion Brad Walker (silver) and Hooker (bronze), Lukyanenko confessed that he hadn’t believed in victory though he had got himself really concentrated on achieving a place – though not the highest – on the podium.

“When I was going to Spain I had a feeling or a premonition – call it whatever you like – that I could be among the (medal) contenders because I had the best result in the season and silver could be my ultimate goal,” said Lukyanenko, “and that would be my utmost goal. But it so happened that I managed to surpass my own expectations.”

One couldn’t say that the victory was an easy walk for Lukyanenko. Twice in Valencia his lack of experience showed through. First of all he totally lost concentration during the qualifications. It was only the third effort that turned out to be lucky for him at 5.70. Then secondly in the final he experienced a similar problem at 5.85. It so happened, that he had to wait a long time before his first attempt and partially lost his competitive mood. He tried to rekindle the feeling of a fighter but his first attempt was not successful.

By sheer will power and a little luck he rediscovered his fight just in time and what resulted was two excellent jumps, which took him to his personal best of 5.90m and the gold.

But his silver medal at the Beijing Olympics remains of greater personal value –

“It’s the most cherished award I’ve ever won. It overshadowed the one I had won at the World Indoor Championships.”

“The atmosphere at the Bird’s Nest made me nervous. It was something unreal. And it was necessary to calm myself down and to get rid of the nervousness. You cannot compare the Olympics with any other event - even with the World Championships.”

Small town boy

So who is this young chap who has started to make it big in the world of vaulting?

Lukyanenko was born and is still living in a little town called Slaviansk which has 50,000 inhabitants and stands on the banks of the Kuban River, a 100kms from the regional centre of Krasnodar.

He really had no choice whether to go in for sport or not, for his family was really fond of sport. His father was a good football player and his mother was not a bad track and field athlete.

He tried several sports including boxing, karate, gymnastics but somehow without any real personal satisfaction. Then one day in 1995, Sergey Gripich, a coach from a youth sport school came to the school where the young Lukyanenko was taking classes and invited the youngsters to join his athletics group. The career of the future pole vaulting star had started.

Yevgeniy Lukyanenko’s younger sister Alisa followed his example by taking up the Pole Vault. But she lacked the decisiveness and courage of her brother and now is away from the sport altogether and is a university student studying English philology.

Two coaches

From the very start of Yevgeniy Lukyanenko’s vaulting career has been guided by a duo of coaches, Anna Ryibukhina and Sergey Gripich, who took responsibility for this newcomer and remain coaching him to this day. Ryiabukhina is the strength coach and Gripich the real fanatic of the pole vault, with his pupils inheriting his love of this difficult event.

It is now Yevgeniy Lukyanenko who is the most famous pupil of Gripich but before him the coach brought up such well known pole vaulters as Tatiana Polnova, Yevgeniy Mikhailichenko and many others.

By the way the two sons of Gripich have been pole vaulters as well. The elder one has already ended his association with the sport but the younger son has cleared 5.65.

Yevgeniy Lukyanenko started to learn the basics of technique at the age of 15, and in 2003 he cleared 5 metres for the first time and then improved his personal best up to 5.10. It took him another five more years to improve it by 91cm to reach his current PB of 6.01.

The year of 2007 was one of the most successful in his career – he added 21cm to his personal best and won for the first time in his life a medal at the senior Russian National Champs (silver).

Last year he added 20cm more to his PB to join the exclusive 6m club of vaulters worldwide.

Lukyanenko is tall - 1.90m – and already strong and fast, and so it is in the technical aspects of the discipline that he has most to improve.

“We are experimenting with my coach. The Pole Vault is an extremely difficult technical event where several components of athletics are combined. We know what we should do and work on.”

“We have been together for years and the progress is evident but I feel that I have some hidden reserves. Maybe we’ll experiment with different types of poles, we’ll try to improve the run-up too.”

“When I cleared 6.01 I got to understand that it was not my final limit. Besides one must have high motivation and 100 per cent concentration.”

I’ll need my poles in London

Lukyanenko is trying to improve step by step. He is now doing a lot of different horizontal jumps, trying to improve his qualities as a sprinter, and as a right-handed person is trying to make his left hand stronger to help balance the pole. He is also spending a lot of time in the gymnastics hall doing special exercises on a trampoline.

In the period of preparation ahead of the competition season he has 2 or even 3 practice sessions per day. During the competition period he practices once or twice per day doing 15 – 20 jumps.

But there is one serious problem that doesn’t assist the World Indoor champion’s improvement and that’s that his little provincial town of Slaviansk has few facilities. For example a modern indoor hall hasn’t yet been constructed.

And it’s true that this winter Lukyanenko had by his standards a low key indoor season of seven meetings, with only one real high spot when finishing second to Hooker in Donetsk on 15 February, with a season’s best of 5.82m.

But Lukyanenko is still young and learning his event, and while currently in the shadow of the 26-year-old Olympic champion has great ambitions.

After his Valencia win when a journalist asked him if he was going to donate one of his poles to the local museum for the region of Kuban who had no World champions in that event so far, Lukyanenko after considering the question for a moment answered:

“It’s still too early. I’ll need my poles in London. If I make it big at the 2012 Olympics, maybe I’ll donate one of my poles.”

By the time of the London Olympics Lukyanenko will still only be 27-years-old.

Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov for the IAAF

[KirkB]

When speaking of potential WR breakers, we can't forget Luky. At only 24 years old, he has many many years ahead of him, and he could surprise us ... even as early as this summer!

If Hooker and Walker are the front-runners, then I guess we'd have to call Luky the "dark horse" to be the one to break Bubka's WRs.

Kirk