After a rollercoaster season, Irving Saladino becomes the Olympic long jump champion (© Getty Images)
MonteCarloIn the third installment of their eight edition review of the highlights of the 2008 Athletics year, A. Lennart Julin and Mirko Jalava browse over the JUMPS.
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High Jump
After a glittering career Stefan Holm entered his final High Jump season determined to achieve something more. The 32-year-old Swede only lost one out of nine competitions indoors clearing 2.37m at the National Indoor Championships in February before gaining his fourth World Indoor Championships gold in Valencia with a fine 2.36m result.
During the outdoor season Holm still was by far the most consistent jumper prior to the Olympics setting a outdoor personal best of 2.37m (2.40m indoors 2005) in Athens in July. But Beijing proved not to be the perfect cap for his career as Holm ended up with a fourth place having fought hard for a medal.
Instead it was 24-year-old Russian Andrey Silnov who took the gold in style clearing 2.36m and letting no-one threaten him for the win. The Russian, who had jumped 2.37m indoors but did not compete in Valencia, didn’t do much prior to the National Championships where he only cleared 2.30m and was left out of the Olympic team. Eventually that was changed as only six days later Silnov cleared a personal best 2.38m in London and suddenly got the Olympic team spot after all.
In Beijing there was no doubt of the winner and Silnov ended the season with six straight wins including 2.35m performances in Lausanne and World Athletics Final in Stuttgart in September. Silnov, who is now in equal 10th position in the world all-time list, will look to be the commanding figure in the high jumping world – he also won the European Championships in Gothenburg 2006.
In Beijing, Germaine Mason, representing Great Britain but born in Jamaica, took a surprise silver medal with a 2.34m personal best, with Yaroslav Rybakov (RUS) getting the bronze with the same result.
Russia is the top nation in this event with 13 athletes in the world top 100. USA has 12 for the second place and Great Britain is third with seven.
Pole Vault
The Pole Vault season started with a bang in January with Steve Hooker (AUS) becoming the 13th man to clear six metres when winning a local meet in Perth, Australia with 6.00m result. 26-year-old Hooker had been a promising vaulter for three seasons already, but just couldn’t deliver in major championships before this year.
The Australian, who finished fourth at the World Junior Championships in Santiago de Chile in 2000, progressed nicely to 5.65m at the age of 22 in 2004 before making a real breakthrough in 2005 with a 5.87m result. 5.96m in Berlin in September 2006 and 5.91m in 2007 just didn’t seem to be enough as the Australian was ninth in Osaka last year, but the tune changed in 2008. He got the bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia clearing 5.80m there before entering the Olympics having cleared his best result in six months, 5.97m, in London in the last competition before Beijing.
But Hooker wasn’t the only favourite for sure, in fact Brad Walker (USA), the 2007 World champion, and world leader before the Olympics with 6.04m, and Russian Yevgeniy Lukyanenko (RUS) held the upper hand before Beijing.
The 23-year-old Russian in particular was in great form during the season winning his last six competitions before Beijing including the one in London where he won with 5.97m ahead of Hooker who cleared the same height.
Lukyanenko had won the World Indoor Championships at 5.90m and vaulted 6.01m in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in July being the 14th six metre man in history. He seemed to be winning in Beijing too having cleared 5.85m, but Hooker’s third try at 5.90m was successful and the Australian went on for his fourth successive third time clearance of the final at 5.96m to win the Olympic gold.
Lukyanenko’s progression has been really fast, 41cm in two years. His personal best stood at 5.60m after 2006 with a 5.81m personal best set at the World Championships in Osaka last year and 6.01m this season.
The third six metre vaulter in 2008, Brad Walker who won the 2007 Osaka World Champs, had a major upset in Beijing and did not clear his opening height in the Olympic qualification competition. Walker is in fourth place in the world all-time list behind World record holder Sergey Bubka (UKR 6.14m outdoors/6.15m indoors), Maksim Tarasov (RUS 6.05m) and Dmitri Markov (AUS 6.05m). The last time there were three athletes over six metres before this season was in 1999 when Maksim Tarasov cleared his PB 6.05m, Jeff Hartwig (USA) 6.02m and Tim Lobinger (GER) 6.00m.
USA heads this event with 27 athletes in the world top 100. Russia and Germany are tied for the second place with 13.
Long Jump
Irving Saladino continued his Long Jump dominance in 2008 as expected. The 25-year-old from Panama, who won all of his nine finals in 2007 including the World Championships in Osaka, didn’t get what he wanted easily though.
Saladino followed a 8.42m indoor performance with a great 8.73m personal best in Hengelo in May, but after that he had a bit of trouble due to a knee injury finishing in seventh place in Berlin with 7.92m. Although he won the last two competitions before Beijing in Rome and Paris the results, 8.30m and 8.31m respectively, were a bit short of the brilliance expected after his early 8.73m which took him to seventh place in the world all-time list.
It was far from easy at the Olympics, as Saladino, the only favourite in the men’s Long Jump competition ending up with two ‘no jumps’ in the qualification before launching a 8.01m effort to enter the final with this third and final attempt. And it wasn’t a clear cut final either with Saladino getting the Olympic gold, first for Panama in any sport, with a rather lowly 8.34m result.
Godfrey Mokoena (RSA) took the silver with 8.24m and Ibrahim Camejo (CUB) bronze jumping 8.20m.
Fourth in Beijing was the real surprise of the season, Ngonidzashe Makusha (ZIM), who only had a personal best of 7.87m before this season. Makusha, jumping for Florida State in the US college competitions, set an 8.30m national record winning the NCAA outdoor championships in Des Moines in June.
Beijing 2008 was the first Olympics when USA did not have an athlete in the final.
USA has 15 athletes in the world top 100 with Russia second at eight and Great Britain, Germany, Brazil and China tied for third with five.
Triple Jump
In the men’s triple jump there was no Christian Olsson (SWE) in Beijing due to a further injury sustained tragically in his come-back competition in Stockholm, but the triple jump final there was still one the most entertaining ones with first four jumpers inside a mere 15cm.
29-year-old Briton Phillips Idowu’s 2008 indoor season was a good one, topped by the World title in Valencia winning with a 17.75m indoor national record which also surpassed his 17.68m outdoor personal best from 2002 Commonwealth Games.
Idowu, who was sixth at the World Championships in Osaka, won all of his four indoor competitions and started well outdoors too. Immediately reaching 17.55m in Haniá in June in his first outdoor competition and then winning the next four competitions before Beijing, meant the Briton was a favourite at the Olympics. Having won a total of nine competitions from the start of the season he went on to reach a season’s best 17.62m result in the Olympic final, but that wasn’t enough for more than a silver medal.
Again it was the 24-year-old Portuguese Nelson Évora, born in Cape Verde, who took another gold medal, this time from the Olympics. Évora, who was a shock winner of the World title in Osaka 2007, despite his young age was already competing at his second Olympics. In 2004 he didn’t make it to the final having jumped 15.72m. He finished fourth at the European Championships in Gothenburg 2006 before winning the world title in Osaka 2007.
Évora, who was not spectacular during the indoor season, but got the bronze from the Valencia World Indoor Championships anyway with a 17.27m performance, started the outdoor campaign rather quietly. Coming to Beijing he had only jumped a 17.24m wind legal season’s best, but was already able to better that in qualification, jumping 17.34m. A 17.67m season’s best was enough in the extremely tight final to get the gold.
Idowu only lost by five centimetres and a shock medal went to 27-year-old Leevan Sands (BAH) with a 17.59m national record.
Sands, who didn’t make it to the final at the World Indoor Championships, had only jumped a 17.29m season’s best at altitude prior to Beijing and had a previous personal best and national record 17.50m set way back in 2002 at the US National Junior College Championships in Odessa, Texas. David Giralt (CUB) set a personal best 17.52m for the fourth place.
Russia is the top country in this event with 12 athletes in the world top 100. USA has nine for second place and China is in third with eight.
2008 World List
WOMEN
High Jump
What makes sports so exciting is that the outcome of a competition is not decided in advance. But some times it is easy to think that the excitement comes at a price that could be seen as unfair and cruel to the athlete. The women's High Jump in 2008 provided the perfect illustration.
Croatia’s Blanka Vlasic had completely dominated the event for more than one year churning out 2m+ and wins in an almost machinelike fashion. Never shying away from the toughest opponents available she still made most competitions look like exhibitions where after dropping the last opponent she took on the 2.09 World record set by Stefka Kostadinova in the 1987 World championships.
So if one would bet on just one Olympic champion in Beijing the safest choice, so close to 100% as you could get, would be Vlasic in the women's High Jump. In her twelve meets during the summer prior to the Olympics, Vlasic had averaged 2.03m - equal to the top seasonal best mark of any other athlete - and usually won by 2-3 (i.e. 6-7 centimetres) heights over the second placer.
It thus seemed that the actual competition in Beijing was just needed to formally confirm what was already clear that Blanka Vlasic would be the 2008 Olympic gold medallist in the High Jump. And the actual Olympic final also went according to the script with Vlasic being the only jumper without any misses already after 1.99. And she added first-time clearances also at 2.01 and 2.03 which meant that anybody wanting to wrestle the gold from Vlasic would need to clear at least 2.05.
Then the seemingly impossible happened. Vlasic failed her first attempt at 2.05 and then Tia Hellebaut who already had raised her best mark for 2008 twice by clearing 2.01 and 2.03 in her second attempts shocked everyone and especially Vlasic by flying over 2.05! In a moment Vlasic's super firm grip upon the lead had turned into a second place and the need to clear 2.07 to change that. A visibly shocked Vlasic was never really close at that height and in the probably greatest upset in Beijing had to be content with the silver medal.
Fate had another cruel trick waiting for Vlasic, who two weeks later was deprived of her share of the $1 Million Golden League Jackpot, when she was lost on the count-back to Germany’s Ariane Friedrich when both cleared 2.00 at the Van Damme Memorial. But despite these two very costly losses the seasonal record of Blanka Vlasic in 2008 has only been surpassed by the very best years of Kostadinova some two decades ago.
Behind Vlasic only six more jumpers cleared two metres and none of them displayed any stability at this level. While Vlasic was 17/17 at 2.00+, Hellebaut was 3/12, Chicherova 5/13, Friedrich 7/12, Slesarenko 5/11, Beitia 1/17 and Howard 2/16. Of those seven only the 24 years old Friedrich joined the "Two metres club" this year and the jumper closest but not quite making it probably was 26-year-old Marina Aitova, although she ended up with 1.97 as her best.
The young trio of jumpers from Uzbekistan and Kazakstan – Svetlana Radzivil, Nadezhda Dusanova och Yekaterina Yevseyeva – had no real backup to those 1.98 they are listed with in the statistics, so it is very hard to make a well informed judgement of their future prospects.
Pole Vault
After two years of "just" being the dominant pole vaulter on the planet, the World record breaking version of Yelena Isinbayeva returned in 2008: First 5.03 in her seasonal opener the Golden Gala in Rome, then 5.04 in Monaco, and finally 5.05 when retaining her Olympic title in Beijing!
And Isinbayeva's best jumps were so good that she would have cleared the bar even if it had been set at 5.10 or 5.12. So as long as she continues to avoid serious injury problems there are a number of new World records waiting to be set in the upcoming years. It is obvious that Isinbayeva has the ambition to put the World record out of reach when she plans to retire after having defended her Olympic title once more in London 2012.
The stream of Isinbayeva records have reinforced the general view that the event is still young and underdeveloped. But there is an alternative interpretation and that is Isinbayeva being a "female Sergey Bubka", i.e. a "once in century" kind of athlete. Remember that it is 23 years now since Bubka first cleared six metres and still such heights have never become commonplace. Only 15 more vaulters have managed to join "the 6m-club" and no one but Bubka himself has ever managed to achieve consistency at such heights.
Also it should be remembered that the women’s Pole Vault really isn't that young anymore. It has been an official World record event since the mid-1990's and been a part of the programme at all international championships for the last decade. That means that the current world elite has "grown up" with the event.
That the event is no longer in rapid progress but seems to be close to a "mature" situation is also supported by the statistical facts. e.g. the 100th mark in the yearly world list has varied between 4.16 and 4.21 during the last five years. Higher up there is a noticeable improvement in the number of 4.50 and 4.70 vaulters which have approximately doubled between 2004 and 2008.
But above 4.70 there appear to be a distinct levelling off, i.e. there is no comparable increase in the number of 4.80 or 4.90 vaulters. Four years after Isinbayeva became the first to clear 4.90 she has been joined on that level by just one other athlete, Jenn Stuczynski who cleared 4.92 at the US Olympic Trials this summer.
The statistical pattern now actually is a mirror image of the men's Pole Vault - with one metre subtracted. i.e. the large group of vaulters in the 5.70/5.80 bracket and the very few marks at 5.90+ has their female parallells at 4.70/4.80 and at 4.90+. Also the nationality patterns are very similar between the sexes with the USA, Russia and Germany having the greatest presence in both lists.
Another indication of the "maturity" the women's Pole Vault now have reached is the fact that the average age for the top-10 and the top-20 in the 2008 list is 27-28 years, with Silke Spiegelburg at 22 being the youngest and only one more sub-25!
Long Jump
This event has in recent years assumed a character approaching that of the 100m Hurdles, i.e. a fairly large and very evenly matched group of top athletes where a medal is just as likely an outcome as not even getting into the championship final.
Since 2000 the seven global outdoor titles have been won by six different athletes – Tatyana Lebedeva in 2004 Olympics and 2007 Worlds being the exception – and if you add the two European Championships (note: all but two of the global championships have had European winners) to the picture it becomes eight different winners in the last nine years!
The only really consistent medallist in this era has been Tatyana Kotova who has no less than seven medals from outdoor championships, however only one gold (2002 Europeans) so for some reason she has never been recognised for her extraordinary consistency. Actually if you add the indoor championships Kotova had reached the podium every time in her first twelve championships (1999-2007) appearances. Her first ever miss came now in Beijing where she didn't even reach the final, missing by two costly centimetres.
In that qualifying round, Blessing Okagbare who also originally eliminated finishing 13th overall with her 6.59, however, when Lyudmila Blonska failed a doping test after the Heptathlon she was also disqualified from the Long Jump, and Okagbare was at the very last minute advanced to the final instead.
There she provided the ultimate illustration of the volatile situation currently in the women's Long Jump: By hitting a new PB of 6.91 in the first round the Nigerian ended up as the Olympic bronze medallist!
If Okagbare was the luckiest long jumper in Beijing then Naide Gomes was by far the most unlucky. Because after a brilliant run-in to an undefeated pre-Olympic season – winning by 24 cm in Stockholm and by 36 cm in Monaco – Gomes was indeed the undisputed favourite. Not so much for the sizeable winning margins as for the display of consistent 7m+ ability in her jumping.
That ability was very much apparent also in Beijing as her first two jumps in the qualification both were way beyond seven metres. But both of those jumps also got red flags due to touching the plasticine indicator at the take-off. And with only one chance left Gomes was overcome with nervousness, missed her run-up marks, stuttered the last steps and jumping from almost a stand-still she recorded an insufficient 6.29. Her dream of Olympic glory crushed.
Instead the gold fight was carried out between the two most consistent and experienced jumpers in the field: Maureen Higa Maggi and Tatyana Lebedeva who both had turned 32 earlier in the summer. Maggi's opener of 7.04 prevailed, as reigning Olympic champion Lebedeva in her final effort came up one frustrating centimetre short.
This triumph of the "veterans" also indicates that the event currently is in a "resting" phase looking for a new generation ready to rekindle it by becoming consistent beyond seven meters. At the moment there are no obvious candidates for that task. The USA as always produces a steady flow of new talents but for some reason or another they have never been able to take that final step to the top.
Tianna Madison illustrates this situation: Since becoming the 2005 World champion when not then having turned 20 by jumping 6.89 in the shivering cold in Helsinki, she has for the last three years not gone beyond 6.60m in legal wind outdoors. Currently the physical talent of Brittney Reese is obvious but will she be able to make the necessary improvements to her still very rough technique?
Triple Jump
This event really had a great year in 2008! The ultimate illustration was provided in Beijing where no fewer than six athletes surpassed the prestigious 15 metres mark making it the greatest Triple Jump competition ever as far as top quality is concerned. The previous record for 15+ jumpers in the same event was four set in the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
It is not by coincidence the best marks come in the top meets, as the Triple Jump has always very much been an "adrenaline event" where tough competition can bring on major improvements distance-wise. Typically the top marks before Beijing came in meets where a couple of the main contenders had gone head-to-head:
Villeneuve d'Ascq 27 June: Savigne 15.02, ... 3) Mbanbo 14.36
Thessaloniki 9 July: Devetzí 15.22, Savigne 15.15
Rethimno 14 July: Savigne 15.20, Devetzí 14.75
Barcelona 19 July: Mbango 14.95, Savigne 14.95w, Devetzí 14.77w
Going into Beijing, Yargelis Savigne had been most impressive with three 15+ meets, while Hrysopiyi Devetzi had one and the other none. However, there are athletes that thrive that little bit extra when Olympic medals are at stake especially if they have been around sometime it takes that special spark.
This was proven once more in 2008 when the Olympic final had been concluded and the medals had gone to three athletes born in 1976 and who all stood on the Olympic podium also four years before! It was almost a perfect dèja-vu:
Athens 2004: 1) Francoise Mbango 15.30, 2) Devetzi 15.25, 3) Tatyana Lebedeva 15.14
Beijing 2008: 1) Mbango 15.39, 2) Lebedeva 15.32, 3) Devetzí 15.23
It is worth noting that Mbango's best performance outside of these two Olympic successes stands at 15.05 (from the 2003 World Championships) so she obviously really is an athlete needing that special championship adrenaline to bring out her full capacity.
Savigne, who probably has the greatest potential and who already has won World titles both outdoors (2007) and indoors (2008), should not despair about being shut out of the medals. Being eight years younger than the medal trio she has at least two more Olympic opportunities and she also is the main candidate for surpassing the World record which has stood unchallenged at 15.50 for thirteen years, i.e. since even before it was introduced on the Olympic programme!
Another athlete to watch in the future should be the former (?) heptathlete Olga Rypakova who raised her PB four times – 14.83, 14.93, 15.03 and 15.11 - during the Olympic final! Just like Savigne born in November 1984 she very much ought to have her best Triple Jumping years ahead of her.
The big question for the future, however, is when (if ever?) will the USA find that female Triple Jumper capable of challenging for the top positions on the global level. Despite having had great athletes in all other jumping events – for both men and women – the USA NR in the women's Triple Jump stands at 14.45, i.e. over a metre away from the World record! No less than 25 other nations have superior NR's!
IAAF
