Derek Miles wins the World Athletics Final pole vault to make up for missing out on the medals in Beijing (© Getty Images)
With temperatures barely over 11 degrees centigrade at the start of the men’s Pole Vault one could hardly have expected fireworks from the eight-man field competing at the World Athletics Final here in Stuttgart.
In the end it was Beijing fourth placer Derek Miles who came out on top with a season’s best 5.80, the American being the only one to show some sort of world class pole vaulting in very difficult conditions.
The reigning World champion and defending World Athletics Final winner Brad Walker looked poised to retain his title after two clean jumps at 5.60 and 5.70 before losing some of his focus at 5.80. After two failures and with Miles having sailed over, he decided to save his last for 5.85 but in these conditions the gamble proved too daring.
Behind the American pair, three men managed 5.60 with third place going to Ukraine’s Maksym Mazuryk ahead of local boy Alexander Straub whose clearance at that height only came the third time around.
Olympic silver medallist Evgeniy Lukyanenko was obviously not in a good day. It took him three tries to go over his opening height at 5.60 and after that he failed to clear any other bar finishing an equal fourth.
If proof was needed that today wasn’t a day for pole vaulting here in Stuttgart well Ukraine’s Olympic bronze medallist Denys Yurchenko and Sergey Kucheryanu of Russia highlighted that fact as both no heighted at 5.40!
Laura Arcoleo for the IAAF
