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Just to stir things up a quiet time I would like to suggest that Bubka could have jumped 6.5 m! I base this on an analysis of his 6.01m jump in Athens where his centre of mass was estimated at 6.50m by sports scientists who also calculated that he could have cleared 6.4 with it. Slomo shows that this was a pretty untidy jump in the fourth stage, and he was clearly off balance as he came off the pole.

I believe that if he had maintained the control he shows in the photo on the front cover of BTB the pole would have hit him more efficiently and he must surely have gone higher! Well thats my story and Im sticking to it.

Re Isinbyeva. I simply compare her with the Lovell twins in Adelaide who at 18 plus both jumped 5.00m. They were 5'7" had less athletic ability that her, very limited gymnastic experience, trained 3 times a week at most and never had the incentives that she has to remain in the sport and jump high.
If she avoids injury I reckon she will jump 5.2m before her career ends!

I predict that if she remains unchallenged, she will eventually get too distracted by all the fringe benefits that come from being a mega-celebrity and lose focus and never reach 5.20. She needs someone to beat her a few times and keep pushing her!

Two of the biggest underachievers ever.

In my humble opinion Isin will jump 5.10-5.12m. As Becca said, she is most likely to be too distracted by the carnival to push much beyond that.

As for Bubka...

6.50m is simply an asinine statement and I find it insulting to his athletic legacy to suggest that he was that much of a dilettante! I've studied his training, competitions, and the circumstances surrounding his development as much as anyone in the world. If he could have jumped 6.50m, then 6.20-6.30m would have been commonplace for him. It was not. Had he been able to jump 6.50m then later in his career when injuries slowed him down from a 10.1 mps guy to a 9.8 mps guy he should still have easily been able to clear 6.00m. He could not. I am not denying that on several occasions his center of mass passed above 6.30-6.40; however, there are major factors that cannot be discounted by any responsible analysis that prevent an athlete from actually clearing the absolute height achieved by their center of mass.

We need to keep perspective that athletes are humans - not gods. They do not perform by flipping a switch and powering up.

Barto

barto - well said.... Achtungpv... care to elaborate?

I think if someone is pushed hard enough, anything...ANYTHING is possible. If you know the story behind Bubka's jump in Athens (6.01 jump.) And someone is there with Bubka the whole way. He could of done it. I have no doubt that Izzy will jump that high, I know she can now. She needs to get on bigger poles, and she needs some comp. But she can do it.

JMP8928 wrote:barto - well said.... Achtungpv... care to elaborate?

just being sarcastic. Everybody's a woulda-shoulda-coulda.

Slow down Barto old son. There was no criticism of the great man in my post. All I suggested was that since Bubka's centre of mass reached 6.50 on a jump which he himself stated would have cleared 6.40 - but which was untidy compared to other jumps he made - he could have possibly maybe perhaps cleared 6.50 on a good day.

He was clearing training bars at 6.20 as far back as 1985 according to Vitaly. It has been suggested that he was training at 6.30/35 later on and I saw him jump at a 6.30 bar on the Atlanta warm up track. Given that the key at the sharp end of this business is pole stiffness, it may be that on a good day with a pole slightly stiffer than the 11.2 he usually jumped on, he MIGHT have done it -especially around 94/95 if someone had put up 500K to see it done!!

Incidentally HE knows he could and should have jumped a lot higher than he did.

I'm confused. I thought a person's center of mass is actually located outside of a persons body when piked over the crossbar and can actually be located below the bar. You saying that Bubka was about 7m in the air for his actual center of mass to be located at 6.40?? Lon

She needs to get on bigger poles

biggest misconception in pole vaulting!

tully, bell and roberts all three jumped 18'6" + on a 14.6 flex pole in the 70's

dj

ps.. the other most used misconception is "i need a "rocket" that will give me air off the top.

if we could change these two "false" thoughts in pole vaulting we would have athletes jumping higher here in the us at least.

agreed

dj wrote:

She needs to get on bigger poles

biggest misconception in pole vaulting!

tully, bell and roberts all three jumped 18'6" + on a 14.6 flex pole in the 70's

dj

Please elaborate for us...