Word: bubka
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Which, let's face it, is a pretty fair description of Sergei Bubka. This, after all, is a man so good at what he does that he often starts vaulting at heights that have already defeated most of his rivals; a man who has jumped higher than any other human being (20 ft. 13/4 in.); a man who has dominated his field more ruthlessly and carved more world records for himself (35--18 indoors, 17 outdoors) than any other sportsman in history. But Bubka is more than simply the world's premier vaulter. He is an athlete...
...Bubka, 32, has been tilting at limitations for years, ever since he began vaulting at age 10 in the Ukrainian coal town of Lugansk, against the wishes of his father, a Soviet army sergeant. "It was a very hard time," he recalls. For nine years he persevered, unheralded, until the 1983 World championships in Helsinki. There he cleared 18 ft. 81/4 in. on his first try, a jump that won the gold and presaged dazzling things to come. So green was Bubka at the time that he failed to show up at the required press conference afterward; he had already...
Then came Barcelona. During the 1992 Olympics, Bubka was one of the few sure bets to win a gold. Instead, to everyone's astonishment, he scotched his first three attempts, ignominiously booting himself from the competition. This was more than simply the single biggest track-and- field failure of the entire Olympics; it was also a rent in the cosmic fabric, a mishap as inconceivable as A.J. Foyt's pulling his car out of the garage and backing over the family cat. The fans in Barcelona sat in shocked silence, then proceeded to whistle him out of the stadium--Europe...
...soared to ever more dizzying heights, Bubka has come to be seen as a man who does not break barriers so much as toy with them. More than a dozen of his world records have been by one inch or less. Cynics take note: each of those minor increments triggers a lucrative bonus of as much as $50,000 from meet promoters and equipment sponsors. The parsimonious control with which Bubka seems to measure out these achievements has raised eyebrows among purists, who suspect he may have turned the pole vault into a kind of personal cash machine by slicing...
...charge is not without weight. Since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Bubka has become the most successful pitchman to emerge from the wreckage of the Soviet sports machine, striking a fat endorsement deal with Nike that has made his face as familiar to Europeans as Bo Jackson's and Michael Jordan's are to Americans. Marketing savvy has served Bubka well, establishing him not only as a man of the world record, but also as a man of the world, who maintains for his family a pied-a-terre in Berlin, a condo in Monaco and an apartment...