Brad Walker of USA on his way to gold in the Men's Pole Vault Final (© Getty Images)
For a man normally prepared to meet risk headon – he has a passion for extreme sports, likes fast cars, and won a World Pole Vault title despite suffering concussion from a nasty fall in warm-up – Brad Walker is contrastingly cautious in one respect. Ask him if he is the athlete to extend the United States’ proud Olympic tradition in his event and he takes no chances with his answer.
US vaulting renaissance
At the end of a year in which he added the outdoor World title to his indoor gold medal, won the World Athletics Final, and dominated the IAAF Top List, Walker can look forward with optimism to Olympic year. After the victories of his compatriots Nick Hysong, in 2000, and Tim Mack, in 2004, can Walker make it three in a row in Beijing?
“I hope so,” the 26-year-old Washington-based Walker said. “But I am not looking too far into the future.” No doubt mindful of what happened to another American, Jeff Hartwig, in 2000, when he led the world list on 6.03m but failed to clear a height at the US trials, Walker is wise to be cautious. Furthermore, Hysong failed to qualify from the trials to defend his title in 2004
“As everybody knows, our Olympic trials are pretty tough and, at the last Olympic trials, we had eight guys over 5.70,” added Walker, who finished sixth on that occasion, in his first professional season. “So it is a struggle every year and my main focus is getting through the trials.”
After a 28-year hiatus, the successive triumphs of Hysong and Mack have revived memories of a 20th Century theme, when the US set the longest national winning streak in any event in any sport in Olympic history. With 16 successive Olympic gold medals in the men’s Pole Vault, from 1896 to 1968, the US won every title except for the one contested at the unofficial Games of 1906 (*see footnote).
Controversy
The sequence was ended in controversial circumstances in 1972 and there was no further US winner until 2000. As Mark Butler the editor of the IAAF’s ‘Athletics Statistics Book of Athens 2004’, recounts: just prior to the Munich Games of 1972 “the IAAF imposed a ban on the new Cata-Poles on the grounds that the pole had not been available to all competitors for 12 months. This left quite a few vaulters at a disadvantage (partly psychological) at a time when equipment should not have been a prime factor.”
This ban followed a complaint from East Germany, for whom Wolfgang Nordwig, the 1968 bronze medallist took the gold medal, beating Bob Seagren, of the US, the defending champion, into second place.
Although the IAAF reversed the ban four days before the competition began, it was restored at one day’s notice. Seagren was among the vaulters who had been using the new model, and who now had to use the old one, while Nordwig still used the old one, having failed to adapt to the new one.
Yet, as Butler concludes “the GDR star dealt best with the cold conditions, with unhelpful swirling winds, and might have won even if Seagren “et al” had been allowed to use their preferred poles.”
A cut above the rest
While US names dominate the Olympic roll of honour, the country had to wait until Walker came along before registering its first men’s champion at the World Championships. His victory in Osaka came complete with extreme haircut, a blue Mohawk with two zig-zag lines, like a lightning bolt, down the left side.
The cut took place between qualifying and final. “I have a really good record of jumping well after a haircut,” Walker said at the time. “I did this last year as well and jumped 6.00m.” That clearance, in Jockgrim, remains his personal best and it so impressed one American writer that he described as “the equivalent of three Hummer H2s stacked on top of one another.”
Although beaten regularly on the European circuit this year, Walker hit form when it mattered. “I could not have asked for more in 2007,” he reflected, “not that he didn’t try for more – taking three attempts at 6.16 at the World Athletics Final and trying to beat Sergey Bubka’s World record 6.14m. Bubka, watching in the stadium, would have known his record was safe.
“He’s a smart guy, he knew I probably wasn’t in 6.16 shape,” Walker said. “But I tell you what – it was a lot of fun. It’s great to feel what the bar is like. I’ve never had it up to 6.16 in practice and it gives me motivation for next year.” It is a year which includes the World Indoor Championships, in Valencia, raising the question of whether Walker will defend his bravely earned title from Moscow in 2006.
Concussion
Underestimating his speed on the runway, in a practice attempt for the qualifying round in Moscow, Walker rotated into the pit and went off to the side, hitting his head on the track. “The lights went out for a second – I had concussion,” he recalled. But he got back up, qualified, and after a CT scan, was passed fit for the final.
Walker never gave the incident a chance to build up negativity. “It is a no-fear event,” he said. “If you’re afraid to do what you do on a daily basis, you’re not going to be successful, and that’s the way I approach it.” On whether he will defend in Valencia, he said: “I’m not sure. It depends on how my body feels.”
If he wasn’t a pole vaulter Walker would be taking risks elsewhere. “Extreme sports are fun,” he said. “Snowboarding, skiing, all those kind of things are great. But I have to put all that stuff on hold and concentrate on vaulting.” Having said that, he is “looking at getting a fast car and maybe having fun with that on a track – that’s safe enough, I think.”
David Powell for the IAAF
US Olympic men’s Pole Vault champions
1896: William Hoyt (3.30)
1900: Irving Baxter (3.30)
1904: Charles Dvorak (3.50)
1908: Edward Cook and Alfred Gilbert (3.71)
1912: Harry Babcock (3.95)
1920: Frank Foss (4.09)
1924: Lee Barnes (3.95)
1928: Sabin Carr (4.20)
1932: Bill Miller (4.31)
1936: Earle Meadows (4.35)
1948: Guinn Smith (4.30)
1952: Bob Richards (4.55)
1956: Bob Richards (4.56)
1960: Don Bragg (4.70)
1964: Fred Hansen (5.10)
1968: Bob Seagren (5.40)
2000: Nick Hysong (5.90)
2004: Tim Mack (5.95)
And the ones that got away
1972: Wolfgang Nordwig (GDR, 5.50)
1976: Tadeusz Slusarski (POL, 5.50)
1980: Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz (POL, 5.78)
1984: Pierre Quinon (FRA, 5.75)
1988: Sergey Bubka (URS, 5.90)
1992: Maksim Tarasov (EUN, 5.80)
1996: Jean Galfione (FRA, 5.92)
*A Frenchman, Fernand Gonder, won the event at the 1906 ‘Intermediary’ Games but these are not regarded as official by the International Olympic Committee
