It took the High Jump contest over one hour to start after the track at La Comunidad Stadium in Madrid was heavily drenched by a terrible rain storm. The competitors had already finished their warm up and had been presented to the crowd when the storm started and forced all the jumpers to flee the field.
European champion Yaroslav Rybakov (RUS) competing for Europe and Commonwealth champion Mark Boswell (CAN) representing the Americas were the only two athletes who didn’t resent the terrible weather conditions.
Rybakov had a perfect series from his first height of 2.20 to 2.31 which was a new season’s best for the Russian jumper. Boswell had a couple of failures but still cleared 2.29 with his first jump. After a first attempt mistake at 2.31, the 25 year old Canadian decided to save his last two attempts for 2.33 but missed both tries.
In third Great Britain’s Ben Challenger could only manage the very poor height of 2.20 on his last attempt.
The wait was heavily paid by Australia’s Nick Moroney competing for Oceania who had three failures at the opening height of 2.10m. American champion Nathan Leeper had a poor competition today as well, his only clean jump being his first at 2.10m. All other competitors cleared 2.15m.
