2010 Meets so far: Sydney and Melbourne Track Classics

(Friday, 5 March 2010)

Sydney Track Classic

World and Olympic champion Steve Hooker made his first appearance on the 2010 Australian Athletics Tour and kept the crowd on its feet with a series of lucky escapes before sealing victory at 5.91m.

Opening his campaign at 5.45m Hooker easily cleared that height before stalling briefly at 5.60m then again at 5.70m, clearing both marks on the third and final attempt. The inaugural captain of the Australian Flame then raised the bar to 5.81m and sailed straight over before adding 10 centimetres to that height and pulling off his second attempt. Hooker raised the bar once more to 6.01m but was unable to crack the magical six metre-mark.

“That last jump was pretty good, I felt like I had a massive amount of height there but I’d run out of a little bit of gas by then and I just wasn’t carrying quite enough speed down the runway to get in on that pole,” the 27-year-old Western Australian-based athlete said.

“By the end of the night I’d done a lot of jumps and a lot of run-downs so I probably needed really good conditions to get in on that pole tonight. I felt like things improved technically throughout the competition so that’s the main thing for me.

“5.91m is a great result, 6.01m would have been amazing and that would have been an outdoor personal best for me but it’s still very early in the season and I can’t expect to go out and jump that high every week, especially when I had so many jumps early in the competition but it’s really positive for me to get down there and have such a good attempt at it.”

Melbourne Track Classic

Commonwealth, Olympic and world champion Steve Hooker took out the men’s pole vault with a clearance of 5.65m, unable to take advantage of the ideal conditions at Melbourne Olympic Park and continue his campaign towards the magical six-metre mark.

Opening his account at 5.65m Hooker sailed over the bar on his first attempt but came unstuck when the bar was raised to 5.85m, missing all three attempts at that height.

The 27-year-old captain of the Australian Flame said he was disappointed by the result but would take positives away from tonight’s meet.

“Up until I was out of the competition I thought it was still going to be a big night so it’s just a bit of a shock but I guess that happens, I’ll have to spend a bit of time with (coach) Alex (Parnov) and look at the video and work out exactly what was going on because I felt like I should have been clearing those bars,” he said.

“I felt like I was running in and taking off much, much better than I was in Sydney so when that happens and you don’t get the result it’s sort of hard to understand what exactly has happened but I’m going to look at the positives out of this one, my run-up speed was good, my plant was better, I was taking off further out, all those things I wanted to do in this competition but unfortunately the result just didn’t come.”

“I still think it was a good trial run for world indoors, it was very still conditions so it’s a good opportunity to test the poles I’ll be needing, the run-ups I’ll be using indoors, so there’s a lot of positives to take out of it, just not a positive result.”

With thanks to Athletics Australia.