03.03.2009

Hooker at home in Melbourne

Following the biggest year of his career to date, Olympic pole vault hero Steve Hooker can’t hardly wait to return to the track where it all began this Thursday night for the World Athletics Tour Melbourne at Olympic Park.

With three six-metre jumps and a win at the Sydney Track Classic already under his belt in 2009, Hooker will this week jump in front of his home crowd for the first time since snatching gold in Beijing.

And for the 26-year-old star, a fourth six-metre effort could well be on the cards when the world tour rolls into Melbourne. 

“I think on any day at the moment I’m a chance to jump six metres, that’s just the form I’m in and I feel comfortable jumping at those bars,” Hooker said at today’s John Landy Lunch Club.

“I’m really excited to be jumping in front of my home crowd for the first time since the Olympics and excited to get out there and hopefully get some good results.

“I’d love to put up a six-metre jump in Melbourne, I’ve never done that before and it would be exciting to even have a crack at it.”

Hooker, who held off Russian challenger Yevgeniy Lukyanenko to take out the Sydney Track Classic with a jump of 5.95m on Saturday night, has been widely touted as the man who will at last better the great Sergey Bubka’s longstanding world record of 6.14m in the event.

But for Hooker, the year ahead is all about having fun.

And hoping for a stroke of luck along the way.

“This season’s just about having fun, I’m just going out there enjoying what I’m doing,” he said.

“Definitely in the long term the record’s a goal for me but it’s not so much on a day-to-day basis because I’m just going out there enjoying competing, enjoying jumping high and being out with all the boys.

“You never know when you’re going to have a bit of luck and sometimes that’s all it takes, if you knock (the bar) sometimes it stays and sometimes it falls off and I think ultimately, it’s a pretty hard bar and that’s what it comes down to.

“That lucky day could happen anywhere.” 

While Melbourne fans will be crossing their fingers that lucky day falls later on this week, Hooker is just as content to have regained his confidence after a nervous lead-up to the Sydney event.  

“I was a bit nervous before the competition in Sydney because I had a lot of travel and that sort of stuff, but I’m a bit more confident that I’ll be able to put up a really good result in Melbourne,” he said.

“I feel like I’ve pulled up really well from Sydney and that I’ll be able to jump high and that’s what I want to do in front of this crowd.

“Olympic Park was the place where I fell in love with pole vault, I remember sitting up in the top tier of the stand and watching James Miller and Simon Arkell go jump for jump in am amazing competition and that was the first time I ever really watched the event.

“It’s a great place to watch pole vault and hopefully I can put on a show similar to what those boys did that day and jump something high and it will be pretty spectacular to watch.”

And for all those wondering, Hooker’s poles are still in one piece after a run-in with an escalator at Sydney Airport last weekend.

“I’ll be fine, my poles are 100 per cent okay,” he said.

Today Hooker took time out from the track to attend the John Landy Lunch Club alongside athletics luminaries John Landy, Ron Clarke, Billy Mills, Catherine Freeman and all the current stars of the World Athletics Tour Melbourne.

On a day that reflected on the sport from the Landy era to the modern era, Craig Mottram offered his exclusive insight into the world of athletics and fellow stars Hooker, Sally McLellan and Asafa Powell previewed all the action ahead of Thursday night.

Tickets to the World Athletics Tour are on sale now at Ticketek online or on 132 849.