The most famous pole vault athlete in the world Sergey Nazarovich Bubka was born in the provincial Ukrainian city of Voroshilovgrad, to which the historical name Lugansk is now returned.
Athlete's childhood
Even in childhood, a talented boy was noticed by coach Vitaly Afanasevich Petrov, who later became his personal trainer. It was he, along with his elder brother Sergei Vasily, who convinced the boy's parents to transfer him to study in Donetsk, where there was a good sports base. By the way, Vasily Bubka, Sergey’s brother, was also a famous
pole vault athlete.First results
Bubka's first world record was recorded in 1984 in Czechoslovakia at sports competitions in the city of Bratislava. Although he earned his first gold medal at the World Championships in Helsinki the year before. A young twenty-year-old athlete in just a year in 1984 six more times set new world records. During this year, at open stadiums, he improved his result four times, and indoors three times. He was applauded while standing at the stadiums of Bratislava, Paris, London, Rome, Vilnius, Milan and Los Angeles.
In July 1985, at an open stadium in France, Bubka set a world record that marked a new era in this sport - he overcame the six-meter bar. Prior to this, the six-meter line was a distant
pipe dream of many athletes. Even for American athletes, who until the end of the seventies had an advantage in equipment. Their poles were made of strategic material - fiberglass, which European athletes began to use only in the early eighties.
Bubka's personal record - raising the bar of world records by seventeen centimeters - falls on the same 1984-1985. In the first years of world fame, the six-meter uncontested height became a desired result for the young champion, the desire to assert himself. The next fourteen centimeters took Sergei almost ten years.
Perseverance of Sergey
The Bubka record is thirty-five established world records, before that no one had achieved such stunning results in this sport. Sergey Bubka achieved such indicators in sports thanks to his fantastic performance, strength, technical literacy and incredible speed, which he could develop.
Bubka’s Olympic record for his entire sports career was one - in Seoul in 1988. The Ukrainian athlete (or rather, at that time the Soviet one) at the Olympic Games was harassed by failure. In 1984, when Bubka was at the peak of fame, the Soviet Union refused to participate in the Olympics on the American continent. In 1992, in Barcelona, Sergey lost in the final competitions. And in 1996, when the record holder was preparing to conquer a new record of six meters twenty centimeters, he was overtaken by a serious injury, after which Sergey Bubka could remain disabled. But the very next year he became the world champion in competitions in Greece.
Bubka set his last world record in 1994 in the city of Sistriere in an open stadium in Italy. This record of Bubka was not broken, and to this day, a height of six meters fourteen centimeters has not yet been submitted to anyone.