Windmills on her mind

High jumper Hestrie Cloete had an awesome 2003 season during which she successfully defended her World title and improved her own African record to 2.06m. Chris Turner portrays the young South African who also won the prestigious title of Athlete of the Year

Cross training has been a buzz phrase in the world of sports’ coaching for a decade or more, but to imagine that a World High Jump champion could discover the secret of unrivalled jumping consistency and dominate her event as the result of the advice from a sprint coach must surely be unique.

South Africa’s Hestrie Cloete, 25, who retained her World High Jump crown in Paris and was later named the 2003 World Athlete of the Year, has a plain and simple philosophy to her athletics career.

“With all the pain you go through in training, you know that there will be a day that you will receive glory for it.”

There has also been one significant moment of ‘pain’ in Cloete’s competitive career too. In 1999 she went into the qualifying stage of the Seville World Championships as the World’s number one jumper in that season’s performance lists, messed everything up and failed to qualify for the final. Her actual expression at the time summed up her feelings -“Kar is gabeur” (…shit happened).

Cloete’s Olympic silver medal the following year and subsequent World title wins in 2001 and 2003 have been her moments for ‘receiving glory’.

In hindsight it was the ignominy of her failure in Seville 1999 which became the foundation for the successful harvest she is now reaping. After establishing a total of 12 African records in the years 1998 to 1999, Seville should have been the crowning glory of her young career, and the shock of what happened or more precisely, didn’t happen at those championships, set both athlete and coach on a new approach to both training and competition.

“I really learnt a lot from what happened in 1999,” confirms Cloete. “I was young in the sport and young in the mind and didn’t know how to handle the pressure.  At that age (21) when you are number one all year prior to a major championships you believe you are going to continue like that throughout, but that’s not really the thing as I found out, because championships especially the qualifying rounds are so very very different.”

Cloete and her coach Martin Marx, have been together for 12 years since they first met when she was a school pupil. Having had four years to reflect Marx is firmly of the opinion that Seville was a watershed moment in his training philosophy and competitive strategy.

“After Seville I began thinking about how to attain consistency throughout a season which obviously included the major championships,” Marx acknowledges. “It was about building a platform, on which both in terms of performance and confidence you can rely on, that is the key. It is very difficult for an athlete to say ‘I will peak at a specific meeting’ and then carry that out in competition. For Cloete to succeed in that respect became my aim.”

Cloete had a phenomenally consistent series in 2003 producing nine competitions when she cleared heights of 2 metres or more, but nothing better exemplified her competitive stability more than the number of times she claimed a nearly perfect jumping record.

The World Championships final in Paris Saint-Denis on 31 August was the embodiment of the South African’s remarkably consistent year. Of the nine heights Cloete attempted she cleared eight of them including her winning 2.06m African record with her first attempts before finally coming unstuck at  2.10m, which if she had achieved would have established a new World record.

Earlier competitions at the IAAF Super Grand Prix meets in both Stockholm and London, and in Berlin, the penultimate Golden League meeting prior to the World Championships, had produced similarly clean jumping score cards. Berlin had also culminated in a glorious Area record of 2.05m.

“I think my great consistency this year has been down to a matter of technique but a matter of the head also. If you know you are capable of clearing a height why bother with leaving it to a second or third attempt. Instead do it on your first jump and put the pressure on all the other athletes. For me it’s a matter of taking the pressure off myself and putting it on my competitors, and giving myself extra time to relax and focus on the next height.”

When asked to explain the secret of Cloete’s consistency Marx is initially slightly more coy in his reasoning but after some moments of hesitation, as if coming to terms with the magnitude of his coaching breakthrough, he is quite happy to confirm at least in generalities that the ‘secret’ is partially due to a new training method he has employed.

But who in their right mind would ever have predicted that Marx’s quest for athletic consistency would have found its answer in the world of international sprinting?

“The secret of Cloete’s consistency is a combination of factors this year,” confesses Marx. “More intensive training and the incorporation of something different to what we have done in the past.”

“I got this ‘something different’ element from a sprint coach. His name? Mike McFarlane (1982 Commonwealth Games 200m champion and former coach to Dwain Chambers). I listened to a talk by him last year, and incorporated something he said into my own coaching approach.”

Whatever that mystery element is, it is working for all to see, as an obvious air of confidence pervades both athlete and coach alike as they answer questions.

“I knew that the High Jump would not be won under 2 metres this year, and I told Hestrie that but throughout this year I have not been worried, as I was confident that Hestrie could meet that challenge.

“Maybe this realisation actually helped us. It mentally woke Hestrie up to think beyond 2 metres as the benchmark for winning.”

There are three other key elements to Cloete’s success. The first is the understandably close relationship between her and Marx.

“As soon as she comes to a practice session I know exactly what mood she is in, and what sort of practice it will be,” says Marx with a cheeky smile on his face. “As such I never tend to force a training session. If I know she is not in the mood what would be the point? I think that is so important because she knows I understand how she feels, and so when I really need to give advice she tends to believe it more strongly.”

Secondly, “The strength of our training regime is in the group. We are fortunate enough to have some of the strongest young female jumpers in South Africa training with Hestrie - Dianie Wondergem (21 years; 1.85m), Anika Smit (17 years; 1.86m) – 5th 2003 World Youth Champs – and Tania Joubert (17 years; 1.80m).”

The final element of Cloete’s outstanding success in 2003 rests on her defeat of Sweden’s World Indoor champion Kajsa Bergqvist in the very last competition of 2002.  That exemplary season which was topped with 2.05m and 2.04m clearances in Poznan and Lausanne respectively, had to that point been as much dominated by the Swede, as was the entire 2003 summer by Cloete.

“Her (Cloete’s) first time clearances at 2.00m and 2.02m were the killer blows, and she remembers Kajsa coming up to her after the 2.02m clearance and saying, ‘why now? How can you do this in the most important meet of the year?’ I think that was the greatest of psychological boosts for Hestrie. As it was the last competition of the season, and the best possible motivation going into the off-season with all the hard work to come.”

Yet what about Cloete’s trade mark ‘windmill action’, her double arm swing as she approaches the bar, how significant is that to her jumping ability?

“Hestrie already had the windmill technique when she was 13 years of age” confirms Marx. “It is just natural to her, it’s her way. When she once had a major fall (in 2000) and missed the landing mat entirely, there was a period of time when I felt ‘well that is that’, as she just couldn’t do the windmill action, and without it, couldn’t get any height.

“Hestrie increases her speed a lot coming into the bar, much more than most of her opponents, and the windmill action just helps to rebalance her approach in front of the bar, bringing her from maximum to optimal speed for the approach. It acts as a rebalancing I suppose in the same way as Jonathan Edwards double arm movement did in his Triple Jump approach.”

Cloete agrees. “It is just something I need to do. Sometimes I am not even conscious that I am doing it. When I look at a replay of a competition, I am surprised that I am doing it with every jump. It just comes so naturally to me.”

When wearing a bib number of 210, it was not surprising that after setting a 2.05 African record in Berlin, Cloete raised the bar to 2.10 in an attempt at breaking the 2.09 World record which had stood to Bulgaria’s Stefka Konstadinova since 1987. Unfortunately, on all three occasions she sat heavily on the bar, tiredness intervening just as it was to do when she made three similar attempts at the record at the World championships in Paris, having earlier improved her African mark to 2.06.

Marx is confident that the record is within her reach. “If you look at some of her performances this summer especially the margin of her clearance of some of the heights in Stockholm and London, realistically she has probably already cleared 2.09m in competition. Her 2.01 jump in Stockholm certainly was of a level of 2.07m or more. The height is definitely there in her jumping already.”

“If the gods are willing it then 2.10m is possible,” is the athlete’s own opinion. The perfect takeoff, and the perfect work over the bar are needed but I am sure it is there within me.”

Yet time is already catching up on Cloete, as she has plans to start a family after accomplishing her goal of an Olympic gold medal in Athens next summer.

“Perhaps after the Olympics I will take a break from the sport and have a baby, and then maybe I will return again to compete but who knows. If I feel like coming back I will, otherwise I will just call it a day.

“The only thing I don’t want to do is to leave this sport because of an injury. I want it to be my decision when I quit. I want to stop when I have had enough, not because I am forced too for a physical reason. I want it to be in my own time, on my own decision and not on a low note.”

Chris Turner is the IAAF Editorial Manager

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 4 - 2003