Word: bubka
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...some point during this packed sports February, between the passing of Dale Earnhardt and the XFL's fifteen minutes of fame, between the Mutombo trade and the return of pitchers and catchers, Sergei Bubka quietly retired...
...insist on seeing Bubka's ambitions solely in terms of material gain is to ignore the depth of his attachment both to his sport and to Ukraine. In addition to his athletics club in Berlin, where he conducts much of his own training, he runs the Bubka sports club in Donetsk, which sponsors 35 coaches and more than 200 children. Each February he also puts together an invitational in Donetsk, in which vaulters from all over the world compete. "I had a dream to do this for our young people," he says. "With changes in my country, many coaches have...
...view his motives as purely pecuniary, one must also dismiss how astonishingly difficult the vault is, even for a master like Bubka. This is not always easy to appreciate, perhaps because there is something deceptively buoyant and elastic about the way a vault appears to unfold on TV. But to see it from 50 ft. away is to understand that the vault is a brutish thing. The poles, especially the ones Bubka uses, are as stiff as lampposts, and their throat-catching bend is the product of extraordinary speed and gristle. Bubka's virtue, or one of them, anyway...
...midair is present outside the stadium as well. He is funny, charming and, despite a reputation for tempestuous disputes with officials, utterly without arrogance. The day before the Atlanta meet, he is the merry prankster, full of jokes and wisecracks. When his Nike representative's cell phone beeps, Bubka snatches it up and informs the caller that the official is too tied up with girls to talk. While perusing socks at Macy's, he seizes a pool cue from a mannequin and declares, "This is my new pole!" Then he giggles over the fact that he has accidentally wandered into...
...Bubka is haunted by Barcelona, he's not about to let on. "A medal?" he asks, smiling. "We will see. I try to remember Barcelona and use it to be more focused for Atlanta. But I just want to make best results possible." That sounds innocuous enough. But the piercing memories of the past, like the injuries that increasingly plague him with age, are clearly visible, etched into his face when he competes. He is still great, but he can no longer overpower the field with the effortlessness of yore. Barcelona changed that. Which...