Sergey Bubka

Sergey Nazarovych Bubka (Сергій Назарович Бубка; Serhiy Nazarovych Bubka; born 4 December 1963) is a Ukrainian former pole vaulter.

Sergey Bubka started competing on the international athletics scene in 1981 when he participated in the European Junior Championship finishing seventh.

In 1983, virtually unknown internationally, he won the world championship in Helsinki, Finland, and the following year set his first world record, clearing 5.85m (19 ft 2 in).

But the 1983 World Championship held in Helsinki was his actual entry point to the 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.

Bubka increased the world record by 21 centimetres (8 inches) in the period from 1984 to 1994, more than other pole vaulters had achieved in the previous 12 years.

He cleared 6.00 meters or better on 45 occasions.

The first Olympics after Bubka's introduction to the international athletics was held in 1984 and was boycotted by the USSR along with the majority of other Eastern Bloc countries.

Two months before the Games he vaulted 12 cm higher than the eventual Olympic gold medal winner Pierre Quinon.

He cleared 6.00 metres (19 feet 8 inches) for the first time on 13 July 1985 in Paris.

This height had long been considered unattainable.

In 1988 Bubka competed in the Seoul Olympics and won his only Olympic gold medal clearing 5.90 m. In 1992 he failed to clear in his first three attempts (5.70, 5.70, 5.75 m) and was out of the Barcelona Olympics.

He represented the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.

Until the dissolution of the 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.

He became the first athlete ever to jump over 6.10 metres, in San Sebastián, Spain in 1991.

By 1992, he was no longer bound to the Soviet system, and signed a contract with Nike that rewarded each world record performance with special bonuses of $40,000.

He has a son who was a professional tennis player, whose name is Sergei.

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

He held the outdoor world record at 6.14 metres between 31 July 1994, and 17 September 2020 when Sweden's Armand Duplantis cleared 6.15 metres, though since adopting rule 260.18a in 2000 the IAAF regards the indoor record as the official "world record".

With virtually no challengers, 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 primarily vaulted on UCS Spirit poles throughout his later career.

In 1994, he achieved his personal record with a vault of 6.14 meters, long after many commentators assumed the great sportsman was retired.

He is also an Honorary Member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), having been involved since 1996.

His older brother, Vasiliy Bubka, was also a medal-winning pole vaulter.

Born in Luhansk, Sergey Nazarovych Bubka was a track-and-field athlete in the 100-meter dash and the long jump, but became a world-class champion only when he turned to the pole vault.

At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 a heel injury caused him to withdraw from the competition without any attempts.

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

Despite his dominance in pole vault, Bubka had a relatively poor record in the Olympic Games.

From 2002 to 2006 Bubka was a member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada with the Party of Regions group and until 2014 an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych.

He was on the youth policy, physical culture, sport and tourism committee while a MVR.

On 5 March 2022 Bubka professed his love for his homeland after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and declared: "Ukraine will win".

Bubka is Senior Vice President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), serving since 2007, and President of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, serving from 2005 to November 2022.

Bubka was twice named Athlete of the Year by Track & Field News, and in 2012 was one of 24 athletes inducted as inaugural members of the International Association of Athletics Federations Hall of Fame.

Bubka won six consecutive IAAF World Championships, an Olympic gold medal and broke the world record for men's pole vault 35 times.

He was the first pole vaulter to clear 6.0 metres and 6.10 metres.

Until January 2014, no other athlete on earth had cleared 6.07, indoors or outdoors.

As of June 2015, 6 meters had been cleared by all athletes worldwide exactly 100 times.