Event Report - Men's Pole Vault - Decathlon

Trey Hardee of United States equalled his season’s best result 5.20m in the Pole Vault, the eighth event of the Decathlon and will win the competition given that he gets a result in the Javelin Throw, which is the next event. Hardee now leads the competition with 7306 points.

Ukraine’s Oleksiy Kasyanov is in surprising second place and has a real chance to win a medal too. The 23-year-old was the top of the scoring for a long time at the Beijing Olympics too, but faded to seventh place there. Now the situation has changed and Kasyanov added an unthinkable 30 centimetres to his personal best with a 4.80m clearance and is in second place with 7124 points after eight events. The Ukrainian is not a very good javelin thrower, but is a fast 1500m runner.

Russian Aleksandr Pogorelov is also in the best form of his career equalling his 2005/06 personal best 5.10 in the Pole Vault. The 29-year-old is in third place now with 7104 points just 20p from the second place. Cuban Yunior Diaz is fourth in the total points with 6941 points after a 4.60 personal best in the Pole Vault, 30 centimetres above his previous best.

Russian Aleksey Sysoyev equalled his personal best with 5.10m and is in fifth place with 6935 points. Leonel Suárez of Cuba finally got a good result for his second day of Decathlon clearing a big personal best 5.00m adding 20cm to his earlier best. Suárez, who is a tremendous javelin thrower and a fast 1500m runner is in sixth place at the moment and is expected to rise to second place in the final rankings.

Pascal Behrenbruch of Germany added 10 centimetres to his earlier personal best with 4.80m and is in eighth place with 6870 points, but he also is a good javelin thrower and will fight for the bronze medal with Pogorelov and Kasyanov in the last two events. Trey Hardee will win the competition and Leonel Suárez finish in second place if nothing dramatic happens in the last events.

Mirko Jalava for the IAAF