Steven Hooker celebrates his Olympic pole vault victory (© Getty Images)
With the exception of the World record you can’t ask much more of an athlete than to win a major global title in a championship record but Australia’s Steve Hooker did exactly that in Beijing this summer when he improved by one centimetre the 5.95m mark with which USA’s Tim Mack had secured the 2004 Olympic Pole Vault crown.
Hooker’s competition in Beijing was a ‘seat of the pants’ ride where he was always close to elimination but whose competitive mettle was proved convincingly when four successive last gasp clearances on the way to the Beijing title and record, saw him secure the gold at his penultimate height of 5.90 and the Olympic record at his next bar.
Steve Landells of Spikesmag.com recently interviewed Australia’s Olympic champion to ask among other questions:
Steve you are back in training for the season ahead, what are your plans for the New Year?
“I plan to compete overseas and do the indoor season, that’s something I always enjoy doing. It’s nice to go overseas and get the ball rolling then the Australian season starts at the end of February with our meets including the Melbourne Grand Prix.”
You competed very sparingly ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games. Do you plan to adopt a similar strategy before next year’s IAAF World Championships in Berlin?
“I planned to compete a little bit more (this season) but I got injured and I had to delay my departure from Australia. Doing a lot of comps before a major competition hasn’t worked that well for me in the past. I think you can get a bit stale competing too much, you can get tired and you are further away from the training volume by the time you have tapered for these competitions.”
“For me, it’s not a secret what I did. I only did four meets up until the Olympic Games and I went to Beijing in great condition. Everyone else was a bit flat and I think the results showed that.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to vary that too much in the future. For me, five or six meets before a major competition is heaps for me. I do plan to do more meets after a major championship but this year, after Beijing, I went home to enjoy time with my family and friends and celebrated.”
Are you planning any changes to you training regime?
“There is stuff I’m always working on and I think that is the beauty of a technical event. You get to always work on your technique. As I get older I’m starting to mature. For me it is a case of continuing along the same path.”
“I don’t think I jumped to my potential height (last year) and I thought I was in six-metre shape. Looking back I cleared 5.97m in London and in Beijing I jumped 5.96m. There’s a lot more there, certainly if I’d have competed against the good guys in good conditions with a good runway and good tailwind. With Yevgeniy (Lukyanenko) and Brad (Walker) jumping how they’ve been jumping you’ve always got good competition.”
You won the Olympic title before your 26th birthday what are your future goals?
“I never thought Beijing would be it for me. If you’d told me four years ago when I was sitting watching the Olympic final in the stand in Athens I would be the gold medallist in Beijing I would probably have laughed at you. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. But it happened and over the last few years I’ve made some big decisions about what done with my career.”
“To me, it is the beginning I want to really establish myself over the next four years and have a good few years where I can continue to improve. I’m learning more and becoming more experienced season after season. I’m really learning to make those clearances at clutch times.”
You have cleared 6.00 but is Sergey Bubka’s World record of 6.14m a feasible goal?
“Yes, because Yevgeniy was super-consistent and did a bunch of competitions in the high 5.90s. I didn’t do that many competitions but three of them were 5.96m or higher. Brad jumped twice over six metres, which doesn’t happen that often.”
“The level has really shifted back to where it was in the early Nineties. You’ve got people consistently jumping these heights and that’s probably us getting used to the modified rules and the three of us having jumped for most of our career with the new rules so it’s not all that unusual for us.”
The women’s pole vault has overshadowed the women’s Pole Vault in recent years is that a source of annoyance?
“That’s just the way it is. It (the women’s pole vault) is a developing sport and world records are set pretty regularly whereas we (the men) are competing in a sport that’s been around for a hundred years. We’ve also had that once in a generation athlete in Sergey Bubka and it’s going to take another once in a generation athlete to take that world record.”
“Don’t get me wrong, though, all the guys competing at the moment have the World record on their radar. They want to see it go and get in good competitions where we can have a good crack at it. We are doing everything we can to get to those heights. Understandably, it is a great World record set by one of the greatest athletes our sport, not only Pole Vault, but track and field has ever seen.”
To find out more about Steve Hooker go to www.spikesmag.com to read the full story
Steve Landells – Spikesmag.com – for the IAAF
