Serhiy Bubka

Prepare Oksana Tokar

Teacher lyalko Valentina

Mihaylovna

2014 year

Serhiy Nazarovych Bubka is a Ukrainian former pole vaulter.

He represented the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991,

was twice named Athlete of the Year by Track & Field

News,[1] and in 2012 was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of theInternational Association of

Athletics Federations Hall of Fame.

Bubka won six consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympics gold and broke the world record for men's pole vaulting 35 times (17 outdoor and 18 indoor records). He was the first pole vaulter to clear 6.0 metresand 6.10 metres.

He held the world record of 6.15 meters, set on 21 February 1993 in Donetsk, Ukraine for almost 21 years until France's RenaudLavillenie cleared 6.16 metres on 15 February 2014 at the same meet in the same arena.

Born in Voroshilovgrad (now Luhans'k), Bubka was a good track-and-field athlete in the 100-meter dash and the long jump, but became a world-class competitor only when he turned to the pole vault. In 1983, virtually unknown internationally, he won the world championship at Helsinki, Finland, and the following year set his first world record, clearing 5m 75 cm (19 ft 2‚ in).

Until the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in late 1991, Bubka competed for Soviet teams. The Soviet sports system rewarded athletes for setting new world records, and he became noted for establishing new records by slim amounts, sometimes as little as a centimeter higher. This allowed him to collect frequent bonus payments and made Bubka an attraction at track-and-field meets.

Sergey Bubka entered international athletics in 1981 participating in the European Junior Championships where he reached 7th place. But the 1983 World Championships held in Helsinki proved to be his actual entry point to the mainstream world athletics, where a relatively unknown Bubka snatched the gold, clearing 5.70 metres (18 feet 8 inches). The years that followed witnessed the unparalleled dominance of Bubka, with him setting new records and standards in pole vaulting.

He set his first world record of 5.85m on 26 May 1984 which he improved to 5.88m a week later, and then to 5.90m a month later. He cleared 6.00 metres (19 feet 8 inches) for the first time on 13 July 1985 in Paris.[5] This height had long been considered unattainable. With virtually no opponents, Bubka improved his own record over the next 10 years until he reached his career best and the then world record of 6.14 m (20 feet 13⁄4 inches) in 1994.

He became the first athlete ever to jump over 6.10 metres, in San Sebastián, Spain in 1991. Until January 2014, no other athlete had cleared 6.07, indoors or outdoors. He set the currently listed world record of 6.14 metres in 1994 after some commentators had already predicted the decline of the great sportsman. Bubka increased the world record by 21 centimetres (8 inches) in the 4 years between 1984 and 1988, more than other pole vaulters had achieved in the previous 12 years. He cleared 6.00 meters or better on 45 occasions, more than all other athletes in history combined (as of 20 April 2009 there have been 42 clearances of 6.00 metres by other athletes).

Bubka officially retired from his pole vault career in 2001 with a ceremony at his Pole Vault Stars meeting in Donetsk.

Though he had complete dominance on pole vaulting at his time, he had a relatively poor record in the Olympic Games. The first Olympics after his introduction into international athletics was in 1984, which was boycotted by the USSR along with most other Eastern Bloc countries. Two months before the games he vaulted 12 cm higher than the eventual Olympic gold medal winner Pierre Quinon. In 1988 Bubka entered the Seoul Olympics and won his only Olympic gold medal clearing 5.90 m. In 1992 he failed to clear in his first 3 attempts (5.70, 5.70, 5.75 m) and was out of the Barcelona Olympics. At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 a heel injury caused him to withdraw from the competition without making even one jump. In 2000 at the Sydney Olympics he was eliminated from the final after three unsuccessful attempts at 5.70 m.

On 28 May 2013, Sergey

Bubka confirmed that he

would run for President of

the International Olympic

Committee. At

the 125th IOC

Session in Buenos Aires he

lost the election toThomas

Bach.

"I love the pole vault because it is a professor's sport. One must not only run and jump, but one must think. Which pole to use, which height to jump, which strategy to use. I love it because the results are immediate and the strongest is the winner. Everyone knows it. In everyday life that is difficult to prove."[25] – Sergey Bubka

"Here is a man who has personally altered his art form, changed the way competitors prepare for it and perform it, even the way spectators perceive it." – Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated about Bubka

"My jump was imperfect, my run-in was too short and my hands were too far back at takeoff. When I manage to iron out these faults, I am sure I can improve." – In an interview after he was the first person to break 20 feet (6.10 m).