Serhei Bubka (Сергій Бубка) (born 4 December 1963 in Voroshilovgrad U.S.S.R., today Luhansk, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian (and former Soviet Union) pole vaulter. He is widely regarded as the best pole vaulter ever and one of the best athletes of modern times.

Bubka won 6 consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympics gold and broke the world record for men's pole vaulting 35 times (17 outdoor and 16 indoor records). He is the first to clear 6.0 metres and the first and only (as of May, 2006) to clear 6.10 metres (20 feet).

He owns the current outdoor world record of 6.14 metres on 31 July 1994 in Sestriere, Italy and the current indoor world record of 6.15 meters on 21 Feb 1993 in Donetsk,Ukraine.

Biography

Sergei Bubka was born and brought up in Lugansk. His father was a soldier and his mother a medical assistant. He commented that both of them were not active in sports. He had a ferocious competitive spirit which was channeled into multiple sports until he met the pole vault coach Vitaly Petrov. Bubka started pole vaulting at the age of 10. In 1978 at an age of 15, Bubka moved to Donetsk, Ukraine with his coach for better training facilities.

Bubka officially retired from his pole vault career in 2001

Pole Vaulting career

He entered athletics in 1981 participating in the European Junior Championships where he fetched a 7th place. But the 1983 World Championship held at Helsinki proved to be his actual entry point to the mainstream world athletics, where a relatively unknown Bubka snatched the gold clearing 5.70m (18 feet 8 inches). The years that followed witnessed the unparalleled dominance of Bubka on pole vaulting with him setting new records and standards in pole vaulting.

He set his first world record of 5.85m in 26 May, 1984 which he improved to 5.88m a week after and then to 5.90m a month after. He cleared 6.00 metres (19 feet 8 inches) on 13 July 1985 in Paris. This height had long been considered unattainable. With virtually no opponents, Bubka improved his own record over the next 10 years till he reached his career best and the current world record of 6.14m in 1994.

He was the first and only (as of May, 2006) athlete ever to jump over 6.10 metres in San Sebastián, Spain in 1991. He set the current world record of 6.14 metres in 1994 after some commentators had already predicted the decline of the great sportsman.

IAAF World Championships

Bubka won the pole vault event in 6 consecutive IAAF World Championships In Athletics from 1983 to 1997

Olympics Curse

Though he had complete dominance on pole vaulting at his time, he has been highly unlucky with olympics. The first Olympics after his introduction into international athletics was in 1984. In 1984 USSR boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics along with the other eastern bloc countries. (Two months before the games he vaulted 12cm higher than the Olympic gold medal winner). In 1988 he won his only gold medal at Seoul Olympics. In 1992 he failed to clear in his first 3 attempts and was out of Barcelona Olympics. In his last Olympics, in 1996, a heel injury caused him to withdraw from the competition without making even one jump.

Technique

Bubka possessed enormous strength, speed and gymnastic abilities. Reportedly his average speed during pole vaulting approach was 22.2mph (which is very close to the average speed of a 100m sprinter). He gripped the pole higher than most vaulters to get extra leverage. Bubka had great strength and could use a relatively heavier pole for his weight for generating more recoil force. Along with these, his development and mastery of the Petrov/Bubka technical model is also considered as the key to his success. A technical model is a sequence of positions and pressures that describe the method and form of a style of pole vaulting. The Petrov/Bubka model is superior to many others today because it allows the vaulter to continuously put energy into the pole while constantly rising towards the bar. While most of the conventional models focus on heavy planting of the pole to the landing pad to create maximum bend in the pole even before they leave the ground, Petrov/Bubka model concentrates on driving the pole up rather than bending it while planting it on the landing pad. While the traditional models depended on the recoil by bending the pole, Petrov/Bubka model could exploit the recoil of the pole and it could exert more energy on the pole during the swinging action.

World record progression by Bubka

Bubka broke the world record for men's pole vaulting a total of 35 times in his career. He broke the outdoor world records 17 times and the indoor world records 18 times. The fact that most of the time he improved his own previous record proves the absolute dominance of Bubka in the event.

Awards and Positions held

• Bubka was awarded best sportsman of the Soviet Union for three years in a row from 1984 to 1986
• Bubka was voted Sportsman of the Year for 1997 by the influential newspaper L 'Equipe
• Bubka was honored as the best pole vaulter of the last half century by Track & Field News
• Bubka was designated as an IAAF council member in 2001
• He is currently serving as the president of National Olympic Council (NOC) of Ukraine and is an IOC member
• Bubka was designated UNESCO Champion for Sport in 2003
• From 2002 to 2006, he had been a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and its committee on questions of youth policy, physical culture, sport and tourism.

Facts

• He has cleared, the once considered unattainable, 6.00 meters or better on more than 44 occasions.
• Bubka increased the world record by 21 centimetres (8 inches) in the 4 years between 1984 and 1988, more than other pole vaulters have achieved in the previous 12 years.
• Sergei Bubka has an elder brother Vasiliy Bubka, who is also a pole vaulter. Vasiliy's personal best outdoors is 5.86 meters.
• Sergei Bubka's son Sergei Bubka Jr. is a tennis player and is currently a regular in ATP's second string circuits

Quotes

• "I love the pole vault because it is a professor's sport.One must not only run and jump, but one must think. Which pole to use, which height to jump, which strategy to use. I love it because the results are immediate and the strongest is the winner. Everyone knows it. In everyday life that is difficult to prove." - Sergie Bubka
• "Here is a man who has personally altered his art form, changed the way competitors prepare for it and perform it, even the way spectators perceive it." - Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated about Bubka

See also

• List of pole vaulters who reached 6 metres

External links

• A small video with the highlights of Bubka's Career
• http://www.neovault.com/articles_bubka_speaks.asp

Pole vaulters | 1963 births | Living people | Ukrainian athletes | Soviet athletes | Olympic athletes of the Soviet Union | Athletes at the 1988 Summer Olympics | Athletes at the 1992 Summer Olympics | Ukrainian politicians | IOC members | World record holders

Сергей Бубка | Sergej Bubka | Serhij Bubka | Sergei Bubka | Sergei Bubka | Sergueï Boubka | 세르히 부브카 | Sergei Bubka | Sergej Boebka | セルゲイ・ブブカ | Sergej Bubka | Siergiej Bubka | Бубка, Сергей Назарович | Serhi Bubka | Sergej Bubka | Sergei Bubka | Бубка Сергій Назарович