Tatiana Grigorieva (AUS) (© Getty Images)
Commonwealth Games Pole Vault champion Tatiana Grigorieva is Australian athletics’ pin-up girl, burdened with the non-pc epithet of the “chick on a stick”, and consequently determined to get more from her sport than just adoration for her pretty face and body beautiful.
“I'm trying to be the best pole vaulter in the world,” Grigorieva said yesterday.
In a major coup to that end, she has persuaded Vitali Petrov, the doyen of pole vault coaches, to come to Adelaide next week to oversee the technical changes she and her husband, Viktor Chistiakov, are trying to make.
Petrov, who coached the peerless Sergey Bubka to his early world titles and records, and laid the technical basis for his enduring reign, is expected in Adelaide on Sunday (December 1) and will stay for two weeks to work alongside John Gormley, a biomechanist who now coaches both South Australians.
In the eyes of some commentators, Grigorieva's golden leap in Manchester in July “earned her the credibility she craved” but in truth the 1999 World Championship bronze and 2000 Olympic silver medallist had long before earned the right to be judged by her sporting achievements alone.
Yet, what Manchester also proved was that she has the temperament to win when it is expected of her.
“Manchester was my first competition when I was the favourite,” Grigorieva reflected. “Everyone said ‘go for it girl, you've got the gold’. It put pressure on but it was a good thing because I want to be favourite in the competitions to come. Once you reach a certain level you have to get used to this kind of attention. And I'm trying to be best in the world.”
However, the biggest catalyst for change was Grigorieva's absolute failure at the IAAF's globally televised World Cup in Madrid in September, when she missed all three of her attempts at the opening height.
“Once you have a bad competition you can find a million reasons why,” she said. “I just want to find solutions. I don't want to have this situation again.”
Grigorieva was speaking before visiting to Sydney University on Friday (November 29) to help organise the inaugural NSW State final of Athletics Australia's IGA Team Athletics, a revolutionary competition for primary school children involving movement skills fundamental to most sports.
The focus next year for the 27-year-old is of course directed at the two IAAF World Championships, indoors in Birmingham and outdoors in Paris. However, in terms of the latter, such is the Australian Federation’s qualification criterion, that Grigorieva is worried that she might not even be selected for the national squad.
Australia's team for the outdoor championships in Paris in August will be selected on results at the Telstra A-series and national championships.
But Grigorieva believes she will need to miss some of the A-series meets - most notably the huge Melbourne Grand Prix on 1 March 2003 - to prepare for the world title meet Birmingham, England, on 14-16 March.
“Melbourne is still do-able but you won't give yourself the best chance to do well in Birmingham.”
An elite athlete's whole life is a battle against compromise and Grigorieva wants three weeks in Europe before competing against America's Stacy Dragila who pipped her for the Sydney Olympic gold.
But she admitted: “I'm a bit worried about this. I'm hoping Athletics Australia understands my situation.“
However, while Grigorieva’s Commonwealth win has raised the bar in terms of her own expectations for both next year’s World Championships, she is not even certain to rank as the number one in Australia this summer, with the imminent return to competition of Perth's former world record-holder Emma George.
George has emerged from a long period of injury rehabilitation with the most muscular set of shoulders in women's vaulting and a brace of ‘personal best’ training performances.
Yet with respect to her own goals Grigorieva insists: “Strength is not the issue. For the pole vaulter it's a special kind of strength. It's not how much I can bench press. The main thing is technique. This is why having John (Gormley) and Petrov working together for me is a huge advantage. Petrov is the best on technique. The way I'm jumping now, I'm too horizontal over the crossbar. I need to get more vertical, while maintaining my horizontal momentum so I don't come down on the bar.''
Like his wife, two metres tall Chistiakov, an Olympic and World Championship finalist, has now moved on from former coach and conditioner Vasili Grichtchenkov - a Russian former world No.1 triple jumper - to work with Petrov and Gormley.
“We're now working on some gymnastics exercises which are a bit more specific, some pole vault drills with stresses on different aspects of the vault,” Chistiakov said.
He and his wife were going to be paying from their own pockets for Petrov's visit until Athletics Australia offered to cover the costs for this obviously legitimate training expense.
Mike Hurst (Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Australia) for the IAAF
