Let’s turn back the clock and go back to Moscow, 1980. A little bit of background first: this story is about Poland. And Poland was never a part of the Soviet Union, per se, but was well within the area of Soviet influence and control. At the beginning of the…
The Ukrainian former athlete Sergey Bubka is a living legend in athletics. For 10 years, he utterly dominated pole vaulting. In that period he broke 35t world records mostly his own. In Seoul 1988, Bubka had his first opportunity to shine in the Olympic Games, having stayed out of Los…
Sergey Bubka’s unexpected win in the pole vault at the 1983 World Championships heralded the beginning of his unparalleled dominance in the event, which included four separate improvements of the world record in 1984, culminating in a clearance of 5.94m. Bubka’s rapid raising of the world record fuelled speculation that…
