Donetsk again attracts the world best vaulters | 10.02.2012
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| Pole vault world champion Pawel Wojciechowski of Poland. (Picture Alliance) |
Among the 15 names in the men's competition at the pole vault only spectacular are Poland's Pawel Wojciechowski and France's Renaud Lavillenie, the gold and bronze medallists from Daegu.
It will be the first competition for Lavillenie, the reigning European champion indoor and outdoors, after fracturing his left hand in a training accident on 5 December.
Wojciechowski, himself is still struggling to regain his fitness after suffering a broken cheekbone in a freak training accident on 7 December, when a pole slipped in his hands and struck him in the face.
The 2011 European Athletics U23 Championships gold medallist missed three weeks of training at the end of last year and has gone no higher than 5.20m in his four competitions in recent weeks.
Also in action in Donetsk's Druzhba Sports Hall will be Russia's Dmitriy Starodubtsev, who leads the world indoors this winter having twice cleared 5.90m, the top local jumpers Maksim Mazuryk with Dennis Yurchenko. Maksim Mazuryk and Dennis Yurchenko, as well as the in-form German pair of Karsten Dilla and Bjorn Otto.
There is no Yelena Isinbayeva, who set the current indoor world record of 5.00m in Donetsk three years ago but the 12-strong women's competition can still boast of Poland's 2009 world Champion Anna Rogowska, Russia's 2010 European Athletics Championships gold medallist Svetlana Feofanova, and the improving Czech vaulter Jirina Ptacnikova, who recently set a personal best of 4.62m.
In the previous 22 years, 11 world records have been set in Donetsk and although it seems unlikely that number will be added to on Saturday, there are high hopes of some 2012 world leading marks.
Further details of all the 2012 European Athletics Indoor Permit Meetings can be found here.
