Sergei Bubka





Team Visa CEMEA Mentor

Date of birth: 04/12/63
Sport: Athletics - Pole Vault
Hometown: Lugansk
Languages: Russian

Achievements to date:

Internationals:

Olympic Games
1988, Seoul: 1x Gold

World Championships
1983, Helsinki: 1x Gold
1987, Rome: 1x Gold
1991, Tokyo: 1x Gold
1993, Stuttgart: 1x Gold
1995, Gothenburg: 1x Gold
1997, Athens: 1x Gold

European Championships
1986, Stuttgart: 1x Gold 		  Sergei Bubka is a retired Ukrainian Pole Vaulter. He was brought up in the city of Lugansk where from an early age, he showed the ferocious competitive spirit that would take him to numerous gold medals.

His pole-vaulting career started at the age of 10, under the tutorage of Vitaly Petrov. By the time he was 15, it was necessary for Sergei to move to Donetsk to take advantage of better training facilities.

Sergei entered international athletics in the 1981 season, when he participated at the European Junior Championships where he achieved 7th place. However it was two years later that his arrival on the international scene was really announced. In the 1983 World Championships he cleared 5.70 meters to take Gold.

During the following season, he set his first world record of 5.85m, which he was to break another 16 times throughout his career. Even today his record of 6.14m still stands.

Building on his success at the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki, Bubka became the first and only athlete ever to win 6 consecutive World Championships.

Although he totally dominated the event throughout the majority of the 80’s and 90’s, Sergei only won one Olympic medal, at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games.

Along with his role as a Team Visa Mentor Sergei is now serving as the president of the National Olympic Council of Ukraine, is an IOC Executive Board member and Sr. Vice-President of the IAAF. Early in 2008 he was named Chairman of the Coordination Committee for the first Summer Youth Olympic Games, which will be hosted in Singapore in 2010.