Holm, high jumping’s Mr. Consistency, to bid farwell in Stuttgart

Stuttgart, GermanyIt is hard to comprehend that there has indeed been a time when major High Jump competitions were held without Stefan Holm participating - you have to go back more than a decade to experience that. But from 2009 the High Jump map will be redrawn as the 32-year-old Holm has announced that the IAAF / VTB Bank World Athletics Final in Stuttgart this weekend will be his very last international competition.

Despite Holm never being the overwhelming dominant of his event – although in 2004 he did in fact win all his meets both indoors and outdoors - he has never "just been there", but has consistently been a contender for the top positions whenever a major High Jump competition has been staged. Opponents have come and gone but Stefan C. Holm has remained.

That C stands for his official middle name, Christian, but looking back at his athletics career there are at least four other interpretations that would be at just as appropriate as middle names

C as in ‘Challenge driven’

In the mid-1980's Holm was inspired to try high jumping in the back yard of the Holm family house in Forshaga (6000 inhabitants) in western Sweden by following Patrik Sjöberg's success on TV. Holm joined a club in nearby Kil (no athletics club in Forshaga) at age 11 and was during the first years reasonably successful – but not in a way that indicated a future world class performer – in local youth meets.

Winning his first national titles in the U16 age group indoors and outdoors in 1991 didn't bring much attention on the national level and not even clearing 2.09 next winter – the second best (to Sjöberg's 2.21) ever in Sweden in that age group – didn’t really change the general perception. That general perception was although Holm jumped quite well he was still much too small to ever become competitive internationally as a senior. He was after all at 181 centimeters almost 20cm shorter than the norm, i.e. Sjöberg.

But those experts completely missed one factor – Holm 's mind! That he is a person who really thrives on others expressing doubt, something that is clearly illustrated by the sentence included at the bottom of all his e-mail messages: "It is one's duty to prove the doubters wrong".

So being consistently written off for his (lack of) height - and also for his choice of coach (his father Johnny) - actually was the perfect motivation for a challenge driven person as Holm to work 100% to achieve the objective of becoming the best high jumper in the world.

Even since he reached the top – and proved the doubters wrong – he has been a master of inventing new challenges to motivate him to go on. When he first made 2.30 he heard a remark from Patrik Sjöberg that 2.30 just once was more or less nothing, so Holm set out to clear that height more times than Sjöberg did in his career. It was a goal Holm achieved this past winter when he at the GE Galan in Stockholm had his 119th 2.30+ meet.

It is also very typical that almost immediately after he had secured that coveted Olympic gold in Athens 2004 Holm – as the ultimate student of the High Jump and its history – started thinking about becoming the first ever male two-time Olympic High Jump champion. A challenge that kept him highly motivated for another four years.

C as in ‘Championship performer’

When his childhood idol Sjöberg at age 25 stopped competing at the Swedish National Championships because he didn't find it of any interest, the 14-year-old Holm vowed to himself that he never would disappoint any of his fans by skipping the most important national meet. It was a promise he certainly has kept.

From age 17 (in 1993) he has competed in every outdoor championship but 1997 and every indoor championship but 2005. Both those missed meets were of course due to injuries. And he has not just showed up or not just secured the win – he has really giving it his all: Winning the last 11 outdoor titles with the average height of 2.296 and 11 of the last 12 indoor titles averaging 2.292! He has also snatched the championship records from Sjöberg with 2.32 outdoors (2003 and 2008) and 2.38 indoors (2007).

This attitude of "it is all about the championships" has been just as conspicuous on the international level. All through his career he in the autumn when sitting down to plan the next year had begun by marking down all the relevant championships nationally and internationally – as well as all relevant international matches for the Swedish national team. Not until that had been done did he started checking what other meets he might compete in – as a preparation for those championships.

His début internationally was the Europan Youth Olympic Days (U18) in 1993, where he finished 4th, followed three weeks later by the European Junior Championships (U20) where he was 11th. After 7th in the 1994 World Juniors and 6th in 1995 European Juniors he made his first senior championships in the 1997 World Indoors finishing a credible 8th.

But the truly amazing thing is that from then on – with the exception of the 1997 World Outdoors when he was injured – Stefan Holm has competed in every available international championships - Olympics, World and European - indoors and outdoors! That means 11 (eleven!) straight years of double championship appearances! Has any athlete in any event ever compiled a championship CV of that magnitude?

And even there is someone else with a matching streak of competitions then they certainly are not able to match the quality demonstrated by Holm. Because just as with the national championships he has certainly been performing at an extraordinary level. If we look at what happened in the new millenium (from 2000 onwards, i.e. a mere 18 championships covering over two Olympic cycles ....) we get the following numbers:

* Top mark 2.40 ('05 European Indoors), lowest 2.29 ('02 Europeans and '05 Worlds) and average 2.328!!!
* Top placing 1st (one Olympics, four World Indoors, two Europan Indoors), lowest 7th ('05 Worlds, but still same height as the silver medallist!), 11 medals and five 4th places, average finish No 2.67!!
* Only four times (out of 18) finishing more than one height away from the gold winning mark!

C as in ‘Competitor’

From what is written above it is obvious that Holm is the kind of athlete going for honours rather than marks, i.e. that he always had been wanting to prove himself in head-to-head competitions, especially in meets that are significant/prestigious.

Since age 20 Holm has been the Swedish representative in the European Cup every year but one (in 2006 he was very unhappy to lose the place to Linus Thörnblad). Of those 12 Cup starts he has provided maximum points for the Swedish team in the last nine! As for the prestigious match vs. arch rivals Finland he has 15 straight appearances and since 1997 he has only once (in 2003) lost to a Finnish opponent.

But he has also been keen to keep a record of his head-to-head numbers with his opponents. It started with fellow Swede Staffan Strand with whom he for many years had an evenly balanced rivalry. Both born in 1976 they first met in March 1989 and not until 2003 did Holm manage to finally pull away significantly. The final score became 83-8-47 (win-tie-loss)!

Those numbers are courtesy of Holm's website www.scholm.com where you can just about drown in every imaginable form of High Jump statistics. One of the features are Holm's head-to-head records vs everybody. Some other interesting examples:

Patrik Sjöberg 0-0-7, Javier Sotomayor 7-0-8, Yaroslav Rybakov 48-7-25, Donald Thomas 9-0-2, Germaine Mason 10-0-3, Linus Thörnblad 58-1-12 and Andrey Silnov 4-0-14. Silnov actually is the only current jumper that will go on into the upcoming post-Holm era with a significant advantage in head-to-head.

C as in ‘Consistent’

But as could be gathered from the above: The most appropriate middle name still is "consistent", because the amazing consistency at world class heights for years and years is really the Stefan Holm trademark. Which is especially remarkable as he – being just 181 cm tall – always has had to rely on very high speed in the run-up and an absolutely perfectly timed "superarch" body position when passing the bar. These factors mean very small margins of error which ought to have spelled the opposite of consistency.

But as Holm said, "It is one's duty to prove the doubters wrong", and looking at his complete career record he certainly has lived up to his own motto: Not counting the World Athletics Final, he has competed in 474 meets since 20 February 1988 winning 56%, finishing on the podium in 82% and in the top-6 in 96%!!!

Holm 's average mark for all those 474 meets is 2.153 and if we look at the last nine years (2000-2008) he averages 2.297 for 208 competitions!!

Another measure of Holm's unique consistency at or very near the top is Track & Field News traditional yearly rankings. After 7th places in 1998 and 1999 Holm has been ranked 4 – 1 – 1 – 2 – 1 – 2 – 4 – 2 and he will probably end up in the top-3 also this year, after he won the World Indoor title, raised his outdoor PB (to 2.37 in the Athens GP) and only very, very narrowly missed out in the Beijing medal hunt.

However, despite thus still demonstrably being highly competitive on the world scene, Holm has now decided to hang up the spikes. Why? The simple answer is that not even Holm has been able to find a new challenge capable of motivating him to carry on the strenuous training regime. Especially as a body that has been amazingly resilient (no major injuries and no operations!) during a decade of world class high jumping finally has started to protest a little bit more vociferously.

But although he will be missed on the High Jump runways of the world Holm will not disappear completely from international athletics as he has been voted a member of the Athlete's Commissions of both the IAAF and European Athletics. No doubt he will be able to contribute much – not just the experience of having been the world's foremost High Jumper the last decade – in those forums.

A. Lennart Julin for the IAAF