With 33 consecutive victories and jumps far more than anyone else this season, Croatia’s Blanka Vlasic looks unstoppable in the high jump heading to Beijing
With 33 consecutive victories and jumps far more than anyone else this season, Croatia’s Blanka Vlasic looks unstoppable in the high jump heading to Beijing
BELGRADE: Croatian high jumper Blanka Vlasic is aiming for her first Olympic honour at the peak of her powers. The 24-year-old World champion is hot favourite in the Chinese capital after 33 consecutive victories and she has jumped 3 centimetres higher than anyone else this season.
Vlasic, whose father and former coach Josko was a former decathlete, won her first senior gold medal at last year’s World championships when she set a personal best of 2.07 metres. She won the high jump at the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart in September and the world indoor championships in Valencia this year. Her father’s 1984 decathlon record still stands, a rare example of father and daughter simultaneously holding National records.
Vlasic was born in Split, Croatia’s main Adriatic artery. Her father named her after the Moroccan city of Casablanca where he took part in the 1983 Mediterranean Games shortly before her birth. She made the headlines in the early stages of her career with a series of semi-nude photos. Vlasic won the bronze medal at the 2004 world indoor championships in Budapest but ended the season on a low after finishing 11th at the Olympics in Athens.
Vlasic captured the silver at the 2006 world indoors in Moscow before she took world athletics by storm last year. She registered 18 wins in 19 outdoor competitions after finishing fifth at the European indoors in Birmingham in March 2007.
The only second-place finish, at the Bislett Games in Oslo, cost Vlasic a chance to earn a share of last year’s $1 million Golden League jackpot won by US sprinter Sanya Richards and Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva. In October, she became the first Croatian to be named the European women’s Athlete of the Year. This year she remains in contention for the Golden League jackpot. Known for striking a pose when she clears the bar, Vlasic will certainly be one of the most eye-catching athletes in Beijing. If she hits top form, her other ambition of breaking the world record of 2.09 metres.
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