Bulgarian high jumper Stefka Kostadinova (© Getty Images)
Stefka Kostadinova was still a teenager when she limbered up in the Palais Omnisports for the high jump at the World Indoor Games on 19 January 1985.
Those ground-breaking Games, staged in the Bercy district of Paris 40 years ago, paved the way for the World Athletics Indoor Championships, which were inaugurated in Indianapolis two years later, in March 1987.
For Kostadinova, they were the launching pad for a decade and more of domination of the global women’s high jump game.
That Sunday afternoon in the 12th arrondissement of the French capital, the 19-year-old emerged from the shadows to claim the first of nine successive titles on the senior international stage – the first of an unprecedented five world indoor crowns.
At the time, Kostadinova was ranked number two in her event in her own country; in East Berlin the previous June, Lyudmila Andonova had jumped 2.07m, eclipsing Tamara Bykova’s world record by two centimetres.
Two months shy of her 20th birthday, however, the PE student from Plovdiv was a rapidly rising star.
Kostadinova had improved by 10 centimetres in the summer of 1984, when Bulgarian athletes missed out on the Los Angeles Olympics because of the Eastern Bloc boycott, becoming only the eighth woman in history to jump 2.00m.
In the absence of Andonova, Kostadinova produced a flawless performance in Paris, with first-time successes at 1.80m, 1.85m, 1.90m, 1.94m and 1.97m.
The latter clearance proved sufficient to secure victory. Swede Susanne Lorentson secured silver with 1.94m, while third place was shared by three women who had ventured over 1.90m: Poland’s Danuta Bulkowska, Silvia Costa of Cuba and the 31-year-old Canadian Debbie Brill, who had been a Commonwealth champion at the age of 17 back in 1970.
Not content with the gold medal, Kostadinova took a shot at the 2.04m world indoor record held by another great teenage prodigy of the event, Ulrike Meyfarth, the German who won Olympic gold in Munich at 16 in 1972 (and as a 28-year-old in LA in 1984).
She failed her three attempts, but over the course of 1985 the young World Indoor Games champion proceeded to establish herself as the undisputed world No.1 in the women’s high jump.
Unbeaten in all 25 of her competitions, Kostadinova emerged victorious at the European Indoor Championships in Piraeus and the World Cup in Canberra, and topped the world list with 2.06m, her winning height ahead of Bykova at the European Cup in Moscow.
In 1986 she first equalled Andonova’s outdoor world record of 2.07m in Sofia on 26 May, then eclipsed it six days later with a second-time clearance at 2.08m, again in Bulgaria’s capital city.
World record intact for 37 years
The upward trajectory continued in 1987.
The burgeoning Bulgarian bagged world titles indoors, with a world indoor record of 2.05m in Indianapolis in March, and outdoors in Rome in September, with a world outdoor mark of 2.09m.
Stefka Kostadinova, winner of the high jump at the 1987 World Championships in Rome (© Getty Images)
It was a measure of Kostadinova’s class that her 2.09m remained intact as the world record for two months short of 37 years, before Yaroslava Mahuchikh’s landmark 2.10m jump at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Paris in July last year.
Such was Kostadinova’s domination of the women’s high jump, between 1985 and 1988 she won nine international championships, Cups or Games in a row: in 1985 the World Indoor Games, European Indoor Championships and World Cup; in 1986 the Goodwill Games and outdoor European Championships; in 1987 the European Indoor Championships, the World Indoor Championships and the outdoor World Championships; and in 1988 the European Indoor Championships.
As fate would have it, the winning came to an end at the Olympic Games in Seoul later in 1988. In a jump off for the gold, Kostadinova was beaten by Louise Ritter, the injury-plagued US jumper from Texas, scraping over the Olympic record height of 2.03m.
Kostadinova’s own career was subsequently dogged by physical problems, her explosive lift-off causing a knee injury and a broken foot bone.
She finished fourth at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, then took time off to give birth to a son, Nikolai, before winning a second world outdoor title in Gothenburg in 1995.
Kostadinova’s autographed bib number from that victory is on display in the World Athletics Championships Collection gallery of the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
She finally claimed Olympic gold a year later.
“I’m very happy,” Kostadinova declared in the aftermath of 1996 triumph in Atlanta. “I’ve waited eight years for this.”
By then, she was 31, but one final high jump hurrah still remained.
Return to Bercy – fifth world indoor gold
Completing her 12-year circle of global successes, Kostadinova returned to Paris and the Palais Ominsports for the 1997 World Indoor Championships.
Victorious in the French capital in 1985, in Indianapolis in 1987, in Budapest in 1989 and in Toronto in 1993, the pride of Plovdiv prevailed once again, securing world indoor title number five as the only woman clear at 2.02m.
Stefka Kostadinova in action in the high jump (© Getty Images)
It was a record haul of world indoor golds in a single individual event, equalled by the Cuban long jumper Ivan Pedroso in 2001 and ultimately surpassed by Mozambique’s Maria Mutola with a sixth 800m success in 2004, and a seventh in 2006.
In retirement, Kostadinova has forged a successful career in sports administration as president of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee since 2005.
Her world record might have gone now, but the depth of her dominance is still reflected in the list of the greatest women’s high jump clearances of all-time.
Kostadinova made eleven clearances of 2.06m or higher. Mahuchikh has two.
At 23, the Ukrainian has jumped 2.00m on 23 occasions thus far. The reigning world and Olympic champion has a long way to go to catch up with Kostadinova.
The brilliant Bulgarian, who turns 60 in March, achieved a staggering tally of 197.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
