Bubka - 1992 Olympic NH - What happened?

[lonestar]

It's not uncommon for even the very best pole vaulters in the world to experience the occasional no-height. It just happened to Isinbayeva last weekend.

Probably the most famous no-height (2nd probably going to Dan O'Brien in the '92 Olympic Trials) was of course Bubka in the 1992 Olympics.

I pose this question to anyone who has ever seen the video footage of those games: What happened? Why did he NH? Dwight Stones' expert(sarcasm) commentary simply said he was under and that there were swirling winds that day. Does anyone agree/disagree? Is there such thing as just simply having a bad day and was that the case? Or was it something else? Pole selection?

This could be a good topic to learn from...

[opalkak]

I heard a rumor food poisoning helped out with one of Bubka's performances at the olympics. I don't know if it was '92 or not.

[achtungpv]

I've seen footage of all 3 attempts. From what I remember, he elected to go with the same pole (or maybe moved down a pole) for his 3rd and subsequently blew through.

[altius]

I touched on this situation in page 93 of BTB but will expand what i wrote there. before the comp started, the President of the Ukraine went down to the trackside, called Sergei over and gave him the Ukrainian flag -remember that this was the first time Bubka had competed for his home country - not the USSR- so it must have been pretty emotional for him - perhaps too emotional. As i said in BTB not many folk can carry the weight of expectation of a whole nation on their shoulders.

I then watched the comp sitting alongside Vitaly Petrov, Bubkas original coach but who was not coaching him at that time. Vitally is not calm at any time during a competition but he became increasingly agitated as he watched Sergei warm up and get ready to compete. I then also began to watch Bubka carefully and his body language seemed all wrong -I believe on one jump he was not even ready when he was called. To sum it up I do not believe he was mentally ready to compete on that day. Certainly Vitaly was going through the roof -metaphorically that is -over the lack of professionalism he was seeing -or thought he was seeing. That is when he told me the story of how Bubka had sucked it up in Seoul and won gold on a third attempt - to explain why he could not understand how Sergei had 'lost it' in Barcelona - when he had dealt with an even more difficult situation in Seoul without any coaching help.

However this is only surmise on my part - I have not been brave enough to ask Sergei to his face -and that MAY be the only way we will ever know what happened.

Perhaps he has told his good friend Steve Chappell what happened???

[agapit]

Alan you may want to ask boys in Adelaide how they all bet me $20 each when I said, after watching the qualifying round, that Bubka would no height or would jump 5.60 in the final.

You could see that his timing was well off on the plant. He just made it enough through the prelims. My thinking was that he would get even tenser and would try to substitute the timing with his power, which he did. As you remember he had more than enough speed and height, but because of the plant timing was way off he was way too short before the bar.

I think too much pressure being on the board with Michael Jordan downtown Barcelona, Ukrainian President, etc. Even iron men are confused at times. However, it could have been the personal wind for Bubka, since Tarasov won in the same conditions.

I must tell you when he came out for the first attempt at 5.70 in Sydney the wind just have change to a head in one second (that was true). It was almost miraculously dooming and he no heighted there as well.

[Karma]

I spent many years teaching myself how to vault and coming to understand the mechanics of the vault by watching countless hours of Bubka footage. I have the olympic jumps on video but have not viewed them in some time.

I do recall at least 2 of the jumps very clearly...the first and I believe what was the second.

From my perspective, the first jump was simply a bad plant for Bubka. His step was a little bit inside from where he typically planted, however that step was no where near bad enough to cause a complete bail-out for Bubka. I have seen him pull off massive jumps inside of that. I believe the primary reason that jump failed was simply due to the fact that his plant was a bit relaxed. His arms were hammered back and his chest surged forward without moving the pole up in the fassion that he normally would. With his strength, he could have recovered if he had set up and been solid on that take off, but instead he simply lost the jump...typical of most jumpers, it happens all the time.

The second jump I can visualize well (I think his second attempt), I believe that he lost due to a headwind. I remember seeing some wind blowing his hair back while standing at the end of the runway before he started his approach. The vault faild simply due to the pole not being quite at vertical when he finished his jump. There was a lack of pole speed for what he normally had at take-off and I could not find anything technically wrong with that jump. I do remember seeing a good overall view of that jump due to the good camera shot and if you are very familiar with Bubka's explosion and energy transitions throughout the vault, it was apparent (to me) that there was a slight loss of energy from what he generally had. This resulted in a slightly slower pole speed at take-off and throught the sweep (or swing) phase while the pole was still standing up and he came of just a little shy of verticle, coming down on the back side of the bar.

The 3rd jump...I think this was actually the last and that I am recalling these in order...I didn't study too well because as I recall, he blew into the bar quickly and I couldn't learn much from it. My impression is that the previous post that suggested he went to a lighter pole was correct. I will have to take another look at these jumps again but I recall what it looked like when he hit it and it suggest to me that it was a blow through due to a smaller pole than was neccessary.

All in all, it was just a typical day of vaulting, something we have all gone through, but the expectations and Bubka's consistency made it a big controversy.

My only regret after all the years of watching Bubka was that he lost at least 5 years of peak competition due to his injury that resulted in early retirement and we never got to see what height he would have ended up at.