Track & Field News

[1.97hjsteve]

Did I read on one of the strings that ex-WR HJ record-holder Vladimir Yashchenko died ?

If so, when ?

[gh]

30 November 1999

[Guest]

He died of liver failure and I'm guessing he was an alcoholic. He was a world class party animal as well as a world class high jumper.

[gh]

Yeah, it was cirrhosis, but I thought I'd leave that unsaid.

[1.97hjsteve]

That makes 2 Soviet WR holders in the HJ to die tragically. I remeber that Yuriy Stepanov of 7'1" and built-up shoe fame died from suicide.

Plus of course Brumel's premature passing.

Igor Paklin and Rudolf Povarnitzin, , are you listening ?

[Guest]

I read somewhere Paklin spent a few years in jail for murdering his business partner... there really is something happening with those HJ WR holders...

[jhc68]

Really? And on another thread there is a reference to Henry Thomas the great Hawthorne HS sprinter serving a life sentence... sheesh.

[twittering debutante]

My condolences to the Yashchenko family.

[paulthefan]

very sad.. immense talent, recall he was a stradler too...can not help but wonder if the reason the russian men are underperforming is also linked to the russian word for water.

[tupeke]

Someone has posted a video of Vladimir Yashchenko on Youtube. I've wanted to see footage of this amazing athlete for years and now I finally can. Oh such are the wonders of the internet these days! The video even has his beautiful 2.35m clearance from the 1978 European Indoors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6lpk_9T5hM

[mrbowie]

This is one of the nuttiest threads of all-time.

Reminds me of a group of drinkers near closing time at a bar.

People say stuff with a straight face and a lot of sincerity. But, like writers that smoke weed, when they read what they wrote, because it makes so little sense.

[marknhj]

What an awesome video, thanks for posting it.

I've often wondered how high Yashchenko would have jumped if he'd been born ten years later and was a flopper. His build, speed and athleticism were made for it.

I witnessed a couple of those competitions at very close range, and the height he got over the bar on occasion was astounding. He was very fast over his the last five strides, something you can't see clearly from this video. His death was tragic, and his HJ career only lasted a couple of years, but of the great ones I was lucky to be around when they came on the scene - Soto, Sjoberg, Mogenburg - he was the biggest talent.

[Daisy]

Just saw it. Did you see the comment referring to his three attempts at 2:10 metres on the way to a WR (and taking 20 attempts). I don't remember him at all, was he inconsistent?

[Dietmar239]

[marknhj]

Does anyone have stats on his career? I remember that during his two years at the top he jumped 2.30m, 2.33m, 2.34m and 2.35m (the WR was 2.32m when he came on the scene). But I don't know any other performances, or his early progression...

[gh]

[Per Andersen]

With the Straddle maybe 2.38.

[Cooter Brown]

In the 90s, 52% of all deaths in Russia were alcohol related.

http://news.aol.com/health/article/alcohol-blamed-in-half-of-russian-1990s/545423

[paulthefan]

he was a big dude, was he over 6'5"? I can imagine a very big guy 6'7"+ straddling over 8 foot, but not someone shorter than that.

[marknhj]

[jhc68]

The link above is fabulous Yash video!

Poke around on the same link under Related Video and you will find some other good stuff:
1) a clip of the 1980 OG men's HJ with some basic but interesting comparisons between straddle and flop techniques
2) Gavrilov straddling something close to his body ht. at purported age 54
3) a very wierd, pseudo-psychodelic music video called Ventrale which seems to glorify Yash in sort of a Saturday Night Live spoofish way in some language unknown to me!

Even better, in the commentary under the Yash link, follow this advice:
Insert "Валерий Брумель (Как уходили кумиры" in google search and you get the clip
This is apparently a Russian documentary about Brumel with extensive inteviews with Ter-O and good but redundant footage of the great Brumel that goes on for 44 minutes in Russian. It would be really fascinating if I understood any Russian at all... oh, well

[Walt Murphy]

From my "This Day in T&F" series:
(you can scroll down for the report on Yashchenko)

July `3 1977--I didn’t attend the school, but I’m a big fan of Manhattan College, where my cousin Tom had starred in the late 1950s. So, when Jasper freshman Sam Summerville qualified for the U.S. Junior team that would face a squad from the Soviet Union, I joined Manhattan alum Pierce Power on the drive from New York down to Richmond, Virginia, the site of the dual meet. Since it was going to be a warm weekend, we brought a cooler into the stadium, filled with various forms of liquid refreshment. Before we could quench our thirst for the first time, we were instructed by a local State Trooper that we had to remove the cooler from the stadium. We protested meekly, but, since the trooper didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, we removed the offensive cooler.
Not a good start, but we quickly turned our attention to the action on the track. On the first day of competition(July 2), we saw Renaldo Nehemiah, a recent graduate of Scotch Plains-Fanwood H.S.(NJ), win the 110-meter hurdles in 13.5, a National prep record over the 42” barriers.(The auto-timing system malfunctioned). On the second day, another prep record fell as Paul Lankford (Farmingdale,NY) won the 400-hurdles in 50.52 to break his own mark of 50.87, which was set the previous month when he won the U.S. Junior title. And Sam Summerville made our trip worthwhile by winning the men’s 800 in 1:48.1.
There were also a number of athletes who did well who would later become familiar names in the sport. Oregon freshman Alberto Salazar won the men’s 10,000-meters(29:14.8), with Jim Stintzi, now the head women’s coach at Wisconsin, finishing 2nd; Billy Olson won the men’s pole vault; Syracuse coach Chris Fox was 3rd in the men’s 5000; and 17-year old high school junior Lynn Jennings was 2nd in the women’s 1500-meters.
If nothing else had happened, most in attendance would have gone away thinking they had seen a pretty good meet, but the best was yet to come. Ukrainian Vladimir Yashchenko, a straddler, was already the World Junior Record holder, but no one was prepared for what they were about to witness. Yashchenko needed two jumps to clear 7-3(2.21m) and a new Junior mark of 7-5 3/4(2.28m), but then cleared 7-7(2.31m), a European Record, cleanly on his first attempt. The bar was then raised to 7-7 3/4(2.33m), one centimeter above Dwight Stones’s World Record of 7-7 1/4(2.32m). He cleared on his first attempt with room to spare, setting off a celebration by his Soviet teammates, who ran onto the infield to congratulate him.
When I yelled to Bob Hersh, who was covering the meet for T&F News, “Have you ever heard of this guy?”, he quickly replied, “Heard of him, he’s on my team!”. Hersh, always a step ahead of most game players, had already drafted the 18-year old for his international “Fantasy” team.
Yaschenko’s moment in the sun was a brief one. In 1978, he would set a Word Indoor Record of 7-8 1/2(2.35m) and raise his outdoor mark to 7-8(2.34m), but a serious knee injury forced him into early retirement in 1979, before he reached his 20th birthday. Tragically, he died at the young age of 40.
Related Links:
Sports Illustrated Vault-; http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1092635/index.htm
Obituaries:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-vladimir-yashchenko-1130993.html;
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/03/sports/vladimir-yashchenko-40-high-jumper.html;
http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=15399.html[/url]

[Dietmar239]

[dal4018]

[jhc68]

[tupeke]

Here is Yashchenko's personal progression from age 12. Very impressive.

12 - 1.45m
13 - 1.60m
14 - 1.70m
15 - 2.03m
16 - 2.12m
17 - 2.22m
18 - 2.33m
19 - 2.35m

[imaginative]

Of course, looking at progression can give another view of his
potential. Consider for a comparison
http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=0/athcode=3683/index.html
and
http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=0/athcode=9383/index.html

[dal4018]

[jhc68]

Ah, the straddle inventor question!

There may be some dispute about the first straddler, and I'd defer to Per to answer that one. Someone in the 1930's, most likely, who modified the side-to-the bar clearance of the Western Roll to a belly-to-the bar mode. I'd opine that Les Steers was the first straddler to establish clear dominance in the event, setting a world record in 1941 and (maybe) clearing an unofficial 7 feet in an indoor exhibition.

But neither Steers nor any of the other great straddlers could have employed the Flop before the common usage of foam landing pits in the 1960's due to almost certain paraplegia resulting from any awkward landing on sand or sawdust surfaces.

[dal4018]

[dal4018]

[dj]

[Per Andersen]

I agree about Albritton.

The problem in identifying the exact first straddler is that when the "no diving rule" got removed in the early 30's, the evolution from Western Roll to the straddle became almost natural.
So various jumpers could have been playing with this technique.

BTW - The Swedish, Norwegian, Danish name for the straddle is "Dykk stil" (Diving style)

[dal4018]

[Daisy]