When Steve Hooker won three consecutive competitions at six metres or higher to start his 2009 year, his performances prompted talk of breaking Sergey Bubka’s world record.
Hooker was the first man since Bubka to produce a hat-trick of six-metre jumps. But if the Beijing 2008 Olympic champion is to achieve his goal of a gold medal at the world championships in Berlin, it is another of the great Sergey’s achievements that he must emulate.
