"Champion des Champions"
The major French sports daily, L'Equipe, has pronounced Sergey Bubka Sportsman of the Year (Champion des Champions 1997) in recognition of his outstanding career, culminating in his sixth consecutive World Championships title in Athens in August 1997.
Bubka, who has been the uncontested king of the pole vault
since 1983, set 17 world records in the event outdoors and 10
indoors between 1984-1994 and still owns both indoor and outdoor
records with 6.15m indoors (1993) and 6.14m outdoors (1994). He
took the L’Equipe title ahead of basket ball player Michael
Jordan (USA) and tennis player Pete Sampras (USA). Wilson
Kipketer (DEN), who won the IAF Athlete of the Year title in a
world-wide poll in November 1997 came fourth in the L’Equipe
selection while Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie took eighth
place.
In the International Athletic Foundation poll, Bubka came a close
third behind Gebrselassie, with Kipketer winning the Athlete of
Year award by a large margin in recognition of his four world
records (2 indoors and 2 outdoors) in the mile.
Bubka was 34 on 4 December but still plans to continue vaulting
and intimated in the recent IAF seminar on Human Performances in
Athletics in Budapest that he could still envisage vaulting 6.30
in the future!
