Silke Spiegelburg (GER) (© Getty Images)
On reflection there was no option but to take up pole vaulting for Silke Spiegelburg. One of today’s most promising athletes in German athletics is the youngest member of a family where the event is a preoccupation.
By the age of 18, Silke Spiegelburg had already been in an Olympic final in Athens 2004, while this season the goal of the World Junior record holder is to stabilise at a level of around 4.50m and further improve her personal best, and qualify for the European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Spiegelburg, 20, has started the 2006 season in style. Her personal best from last year had been 4.48m. Meanwhile she has already bettered this mark three times. After a first competition in Saulheim (Germany) which ended without a no height, she cleared 4.50m in Ostrava, then went on to 4.51m in Kassel and jumped 4.55m in Karlskrona. “For me Ostrava was the real start of the season. I don’t count Saulheim”, Spiegelburg said, and added, “it has been a very good start to the season and I hope to jump higher.” In Kassel she already showed promising attempts at 4.61m.
Pole vaulting brothers
Silke Spiegelburg’s father Ansgar, who is a teacher of biology and sport, had done some pole vaulting as a teenager. Later he studied sport, and when the eldest of his three sons showed interest in the discipline he started coaching. Henrik, the oldest, achieved a personal best of 4.80m but had to stop the sport due to his studies, while the middle son Christian made the German team for the European Junior Championships, and had a personal best of 5.55. A series of injuries were the main reason for him to retire from the sport.
The youngest brother of Silke is well known in international athletics. Richard Spiegelburg is still active and has a personal best of 5.85m. He was sixth at the World Championships in Edmonton in 2001. “It is a big goal to qualify together with Silke for a major international championship,” Richard Spiegelburg says. The European Championships are also his goal for this season.
As well as being the youngest family member, Silke Spiegelburg has again and again been the youngest German team member at international championships. She was the youngest German competitor at the World Youth Championships in 2001 and the European Juniors in 2003, both of which she won. A year later she was the youngest athlete of Germany’s Olympic athletics team. At the age of 18 she reached the Olympic final in Athens, placing 13th. Last summer all other national champions were older than Silke Spiegelburg, and at the 2006 World Indoor Championships she was once again the youngest German. Again, as in Athens, she was in the final where she placed eighth.
Following her own path
On 25 August 2005 she achieved her most remarkable feat to date. On that day she set a World Junior record of 4.48m breaking the mark of Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva who had jumped 4.47m as a junior.
Comparing the progressions of the two vaulters it shows that Spiegelburg is at more or less the same level as Isinbayeva was at that age. Having jumped 4.20m as a 16-year-old Spiegelburg even was 20 centimetres ahead of the Russian. But the young German does not like to be compared with Russia’s senior World record holder. “Of course I was very happy to have broken her World Junior record. But I am not interested at all in comparisons with Yelena Isinbayeva. I want to take my own path and want to find out how far I can get,” she comments.
Flying and Freedom
“I have no real idols in my sport. But I was always impressed by my brothers. They have sort of lived for the Pole Vault right in front of my eyes. When I was a small child it had fascinated me how they jumped into this big Pole Vault pit.” At the age of ten Silke Spiegelburg tried pole vaulting for the first time, and four years later she had reached 3.75m, while at 15 she was fully concentrating on that event. “For me Pole Vault has something of flying and freedom,“ explains Spiegelburg.
Club and coaching change
Although there was surely a lucrative possibility of joining the big club Bayer Leverkusen in the earlier years, Spiegelburg stayed patient and did not change athletics clubs until the end of last year. She preferred to stay at home to finish school first. Until taking her A levels last year she competed for TV Lengerich which is near the family home in northwestern Germany, and her father remained her main coach until then too.
So Spiegelburg has now followed her brother Richard, who is eight years older, to Bayer Leverkusen, and they even share a flat together in Leverkusen. “It is good to experience something new,” comments Spiegelburg, and while her father has retired from coaching, Leszek Klima has taken over.
Besides sport, Spiegelburg hopes to get a place at Cologne University for the autumn term, where she would like to study health economics.
Meanwhile, Richard Spiegelburg has no problems with his younger sister becoming more successful then himself - “I am happy for her. She jumps well and I expect more to come from her. She has learnt a polished technique – my father has done really well.”
It looks possible that the youngest member of this pole vaulting family could become its greatest star.
Jörg Wenig for the IAAF
