PoleVaultPower.com

It's almost 1 am here and this was well worth staying up for!

Congrats to Steve!

I really hope this does wonders for pole vault in Australia. There are some fantastic coaches here and we need more athletes interested in the event. While the country already pulls it's weight in the event, there is potential for even more. Again, congrats to Steve!

By the way, that was Alex Parov who ran onto the track barefoot after the winning jump lol

Sorry Markov 6.05 WCR.

Thanks Becca....

"Hooker. First Aussie male to win Gold in Athletics for 60 years. Long time between drinks."
wickedboy4 on 606

Not true - Ralph Doubell won the 800 in 68 - first field event gold in 60 years - and that is a long time between drinks - let us hope Hooker brings another one in 2012.

The Decline and Fall of Olympic Pole Vaulting:
5.96 is remarkable - congratulations to Steve, but 5.70 was enough for medal in 1984. 5.85 earned bronze in 2004, but no medal at all in 2000 and 1996.

Steve Hooker's 5.90 video to win at www.jaredmecham.com

It didn’t take long for Gerard Dumas, the ultimate vault statistician, to send along this analysis that shows today’s competition yielded the second-poorest average heights in the last twenty years of Olympic finals:

Year Venue Medalists Av. Finalists Av

1988 Seoul 5.85 5.73
1992 Barcelona 5.78 5.66
1996 Atlanta 5.92 5.86
2000 Sydney 5.90 5.85
2004 Athens 5.90 5.79
2008 Beijing 5.84 5.73

(This is just a small part of Gerard’s summary: It includes these data, plus names and heights of first eight finishers for all the games since 1964 Tokyo.)

USATF:

Men's Pole Vault Final

Derek Miles (Tea, S.D.): It was a tough day. It was one of those days when I was forcing things. Nothing was clicking and falling into place. Fourth is tough enough, but to just not to be firing on all cylinders is the hard part. I'll wake up tomorrow and start enjoying the experience. It was an off day and unfortunately, it was the wrong day.

achtungpv wrote:

rainbowgirl28 wrote:IAAF:
22:32
We have official word that Yurchenko is injured and will jump no more. Hooker's got the gold, he's just jumping for the record.

Should just limp down the runway at 5.96 3 times so he could tell the grandkids he went out attempting the OR.

I missed the TV coverage this morning, but hope to see it tonight.

This was a very unusual Final. I counted the number of third-try makes. Of 27 bars made, 12 of them were on third-try!

And Hooker accounted for 4 of those 12!

13 jumps is a lot in a long competition like this.

It was interesting that AchtungPV suggested that Hooker should attempt 5.96, "just so he could tell the grandkids".

After actually CLEARING 5.96, it's too bad that he was spent, and couldn't attempt 6.16, just so he could tell the grandkids.

It's actually quite phenomenal that he won at 5.90, so didn't even NEED to clear 5.96 - yet cleared it on his 13th jump of the day! Very hard to do!

I wonder why he kept getting hip-height, yet falling on the bar? Did he pull out a softer pole for the OR? I can't imagine that he sped up his run on his 13th vault.

Well done, Steve Hooker. You truly are the 2008 Olympic Champion, and you now have an OR and Gold Medal to show to the grandkids some day!

Kirk

achtungpv wrote:

rainbowgirl28 wrote:IAAF: 21:51
Hooker is over on his third attempt! He moves into second. Yurchenko may be injured, which may be why he keeps passing heights.

Not another scrotum injury I hope.

Ouch!

KirkB wrote:It was interesting that AchtungPV suggested that Hooker should attempt 5.96, "just so he could tell the grandkids".
Kirk

When I read that post I was under the impression that comment was referring to Yurchenko who had passed since 5.70 and didn't look healthy enough to actually jump again.

- master

master wrote:

KirkB wrote:It was interesting that AchtungPV suggested that Hooker should attempt 5.96, "just so he could tell the grandkids".
Kirk

When I read that post I was under the impression that comment was referring to Yurchenko who had passed since 5.70 and didn't look healthy enough to actually jump again.

- master

yeah, i was referring to Yurchenko. Him passing since clearing 5.70 reminded me of a kid I competed against that had a 13' PR but at regionals passed until 15' and kicked it off. He said it was so he could tell everybody he went out at 15'.