DAEGU (Sporting Alert) — Steven Hooker suffered a shocking exit to the men’s pole vault competition after failing to clear his opening height at the IAAF World Championships Saturday morning in Daegu.
Heading into the championships, the 29-year-old had said: “Physically now I’ve got myself into pretty good shape but I just haven’t had the jumps to back that up.
“I haven’t been in shape for long enough where I’ve been able to get the number of jumps I’ve needed to.”
But Hooker, who entered the competition as the defending champion, failed to clear his come in height of 5.50m – missing all three attempts – with his last try going all wrong and he didn’t even jumped.
The Australian had been battling with injury and was clearly not championships sharp. He passed his first two heights of 5.20m and 5.35m before entering the event.
