Anna Rogowska of Poland celebrates winning at the 2011 Budgoszcz Indoor Meet (© Adam Nurkiewicz / Mediasport)
Female vaulters and male high jumpers took centre stage at the seventh edition of the Pedro’s Cup indoor meet in Bydgoszcz. In the end World champion Anna Rogowska came through with a clearance at 4.76m and a win against Svetlana Feofanova in the Pole Vault, and world’s number one Ivan Ukhow jumped 2.36m to beat former World champion Donald Thomas.
The women’s Pole Vault competition was struck by the withdrawal of Silke Spiegelburg. The German, who recently cleared 4.76m in Karlsruhe, fell ill after arriving in Bydgoszcz and was unable to take part.
Despite her absence, the competition was a high-quality one, highlighted by a duel between Feofanova and Rogowska. Both women were tied through the early stages, with first-time clearances at 4.40 and second-time successes at 4.58.
When the bar moved up to 4.70, Feofanova, going first, cleared the bar by a good margin. Rogowska missed her chance to tie for the lead by narrowly failing in her first attempt at the height.
Predictably, the Polish World champion decided to pass her remaining attempts to the next height of 4.76m. She had one more failure, but the decisive final attempt was a resounding success. She cleared with several centimetres to spare, recording her best mark of the year.
This clearance was enough to give Rogowska the first place, as Feofanova was not able to get over the bar on any of her three tries. The only remaining question was whether the Pole could improve on the national record she set a year ago at the same meet.
This was not to be, although on her first vault at 4.82 she came near to succeeding. Neither of the following two attempts, one at the same height and a final one at 4.84, was close.
World Championship silver medalist Monika Pyrek, who only came back to regular training recently after winning the Polish edition of ‘Dancing with the Stars’, did not have the best of days. After third-time clearances at both 4.30 and 4.40, she went out of the competition at 4.50. This was good enough for fourth place in the end, behind British youngster Holly Bleasdale, who equalled her lifetime best of 4.50.
Third time 2.36 clearance for new meet record
Ivan Ukhov has been the dominant force on the circuit this winter, but this time, the win did not come his way easily. After an easy clearance at 2.20, he took the bar down on his first attempt at his next height of 2.27. He had no problems clearing this height on his next jump, but he followed that with another failure, at 2.32.
Meanwhile, the 2007 World champion Donald Thomas was putting together the best series of jumps of his season. The Bahamian did not look particularly impressive at the initial heights, but after a second-time clearance at 2.24, things started to click for him. Thomas followed with three successive clearances. He had an impressive jump at 2.27, with another good clearance of 2.30, and followed suit at 2.32 as he brushed the bar, but did not take it down.
Thomas’s clearance forced his Russian rival to take things seriously. He passed his remaining two attempts at 2.32 and opted to go two centimetres higher. Jumping for the first time this evening without track bottoms, he had no problems clearing the bar on his first attempt.
This jump proved sufficient to guarantee Ukhov the victory, as Thomas failed to clear 2.34. Now, it was only a matter of how high the world leader could go. First, the bar was moved another two centimetres. Ukhov failed twice at this height, but on his final attempt, he sailed clear at 2.36, a new meet record.
Not satisfied, he took three more jumps at the would-be personal best of 2.41, but on this occasion, he did not come near clearing it.
Former Olympic medallist Jaroslav Baba finished third in the competition with 2.27.
The only other event of the evening was the men’s Shot Put. In absence of Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski, recovering from shoulder surgery, this was expected to be a contest between world leader Ryan Whiting, veteran Adam Nelson and former European champion Ralf Bartels.
The competition was decided in the second round. First Bartels reached out to 20.40, then Whiting, going next, took the lead from him with 20.69. Adam Nelson, last in the throwing order, managed to split his two rivals with a put of 20.51.
The order of the top three did not change until the end, although two of the putters improved slightly, Whiting to 20.78 in the fourth round, Bartels to 20.42 on his final put.
Pawel Jackowski for the IAAF
