Living the Olympic dream

Take it from 10-time world pole vault champion and 1988 Seoul Olympic gold medalist Sergey Bubka of Ukraine. The toughest and most pressure-packed competition he’d ever engaged in was the Olympics.

“It’s different in the Olympics,” said the 60-year-old Bubka who was recently in Manila for a visit. “In the Worlds, you’re with champions of events in athletics. But in the Olympics, you’re with champions of different sports so you’re with the best from tennis, basketball, boxing and many, many more. In Seoul, I couldn’t believe I was with the greatest sports stars of the world. There’s a lot of pressure. You have to be mentally strong and focused. If you keep thinking about winning a medal, you’ll be burned out mentally when you finally compete.” He said pole vaulting is particularly challenging because it involves not only technique but also tactics.

In Seoul, Bubka struggled from start to finish. On his first jump, he needed two attempts to clear 5.70. Then, he took a huge risk in passing 5.75, 5.80 and 5.85. Rodion Gataullin of Uzbekistan had cleared 5.85 but failed at 5.90. Bubka missed 5.90 twice and his last attempt was gold or bust. In an incredible feat, he soared over the bar at 5.90 to clinch the gold. “Everybody was waiting to see what I was capable of,” said Bubka, quoted in the book “The Olympics: Athens To Athens.” “It was unbearable.” At that point, Bubka had dominated pole vault for five years but it was his first-ever Olympic appearance.

Bubka’s first world championship came in Helsinki in 1983 under extremely testy conditions. “We splashed on the landing pit because of heavy rains,” he recalled. Officials cancelled the results of the abbreviated qualifiers and decided to enter all 27 participants in the final, causing an advance in schedule from early afternoon to 9:30 a.m. Bubka was the only vaulter to clear 5.70 and the next two finishers managed just 5.60.

In 1985, Bubka was on the way to Nice for a competition when he found out there was a tournament in Paris and asked his coach Vitaly Petrov if he could join. Bubka got the go-signal and during the joust, asked to elevate the bar to six meters after clearing 5.70. He failed twice then for the first time by any man in history, passed 6.00. Today, there are 29 vaulters in the six-meter cast, including EJ Obiena. When Bubka retired in 2001, he had cleared 6.00 or over in 49 competitions. In Sunday’s column, Bubka reveals that he was told to go home by Petrov after reporting for tryouts at the age of 10, what’s keeping him busy as an IOC member, his participation in a Paris event next year to commemorate his first 6.00 jump and his advice to Obiena.