Serhiy BUBKA : Athlete, Politician, and Cook
Serhiy Bubka knew no defeats at the greatest international competitions until 1990. He is the only track-and-field athlete to have won at all five world championships in one event, and he also won at the Seoul Olympics. Bubka cleared six meters and more at 42 competitions. He set his latest, 35th, world record in 1994 and was rewarded for this with a $120,000 Ferrari. However, the great athlete’s name began to be used in the past tense after his failure in Atlanta, where he was unable to run up to the pole-vault pit.
Nothing but a mystical story happened to Bubka at the Atlanta Olympics. When he was warming up before the jumps, he got his over-the-neck chain broken, and he walked around the stadium for an hour or so in search of the lost cross. An evil force seemed to be trying to clip the wings of the famous athlete. But it was a guardian angel, not the devil, who kept the daredevil jumper from making a faux pas on that day. He told The Day’s readers about this on New Year’s Eve: “Journalists have spun so much yarn about my refusal to perform at the games. But the truth is that if I had begun to jump there, I would have lost a leg. Doctors from Finland explained this to me. They operated on my Achilles tendon. Had I put off the radical intervention longer, the inflammation would have extended to the bone. I have been living for two years now with a sensation of mysterious processes that torment my Achilles tendon. No matter where I was treated — in Austria, Switzerland, or France — I would end up the same. Posh clinics promised me a full recovery, only asking me to have some patience. I was given injections that created a false impression of well-being. But everything would crumble once I appeared in the jumping sector.”
“You started your sports career long ago, under Brezhnev.”
“And I am finishing it in the team of independent Ukraine, a country that began to be built from scratch. But deep in my heart I remain Soviet, there’s nothing I can do about it. It is the most difficult thing to break one’s accustomed mentality.”
“Even if you settled in Monaco.”
“But I never emigrated anywhere, I only live in two houses. I travel with a Ukrainian official passport. Everything is clear for me in Monaco. But I can’t understand what is going on in the former Soviet Union. I do read newspapers, only to get still more confused.”
“Why don’t you become a Monegasque — to clear up things?”
“There is no sense at all to acquire the citizenship of Monaco: all borders are open for me in any case. I try to help as much as I can my fatherland, my Donetsk, where life is so hard. The current leaders, as soon as they grabbed power, try first of all to line their pockets. I wish they would think at least a little about the common people.”
“Do you have good acquaintances in Monte Carlo?”
“Yes, in principle. For example, the vice-chairman of our athletic commission is Prince Albert, a member of Monaco’s royal family. I respect this very sportsmanlike person. He never displays even a trace of arrogance. When I was coming back from Lausanne, the prince invited me to fly together with him on his father’s plane. A good vehicle: we reached our destination in thirty minutes, and then a helicopter landed on the airfield to pick up the prince. I get along well in Monte Carlo with my fellow countryman Andriy Medviediev and his coach Bob Graham. And now the prince invited my family and me to the dinner dedicated to an international tennis tournament.”
“I think you had to develop high- society manners?”
“I am learning, not without effort. I have always liked to live a simpler life, so today I have to apply some willpower to meet the new requirements. I am mastering social manners. I understand that I cannot just sit around with my mouth closed. You have to talk to people about things, otherwise they will take you for abnormal. I have also procured some fitting clothes: you cannot go to some receptions without a tuxedo.”
“What kind of school do your sons go to?”
“To a French school. But private schools are worse than French public ones. Since last September, my older son has been in a normal Monaco French college which provides a very good education. Things are done about the same way as in the former Soviet schools: there is so much homework and very high requirements. Teachers are satisfied with my children, judging by the report cards. But I have weaned them away from pole- vaulting and, instead, gave them tennis rackets. Let them grow up to be great champions. I like watching them play. For they are coached by the famous Bob Brad. Earlier, he trained Goran Ivanisevic and Andriy Medviediev.”
“If we are not mistaken, you are doing big business in Donetsk now?”
“My firm is the Ukrainian distributor of a big French company producing dry yeast and bread quality additives. We have also begun to bake bread in Donetsk. We have already commissioned a bakery which makes very good bread, buns, biscuits, and macaroni. Commerce has enabled me to equip a pole-vault school with the required apparatus; I also finance children’s competitions and pay salaries to eight coaches at my sport center.”
“Are you not afraid of drawing the attention of criminal elements? Bureaucrats also like the spill-over effect.”
“When you do middle-sized business, they still let you live.”
INCIDENTALLY
A Metal Bubka Towers by the Stadium
The Olympic champion has received recently a “bronze consolation prize:” from now on, the metal-cast Serhiy Bubka will be set for a pole-vault run on the Lokomotiv Stadium plaza in Donetsk. It is the city that erected a monument to its honorary citizen, thus deciding to immortalize the lifetime merits of one of the most glorified athletes of not only Ukraine but also of the whole former USSR.
Neither Serhiy nor his family could hide their embarrassment, which is quite understandable, for until now, throughout the history of athletics, only the Finn Paavo Nurmi and the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila have been honored with monuments in recognition of their outstanding sport achievements. However, Bubka’s wife Liliya said with relief, after peering in the face of the towering statue made by Donetsk sculptor Mykola Yasypenko, that there was no portrait similarity, so you can consider the monument an allegoric image of an athlete in general.
