Andrej Poljanec

After a rather successful indoor season, I took two weeks off and then started preparing for outdoors. My physical shape is getting better and better and I was starting to look forward to outdoor competitions. However, I recently had to face a drastic change in coaching, since our coach is no longer funded by the government. I am really thankful to him for helping me recover from three years under 540, but our paths now strayed away and we can no longer cooperate. The situation now is bitter, since I have nobody to help me and I have no money to go somewhere else. I really hope I can find a solution quickly, cause the competitions are getting closer every day.

We had indoor nationals today in Celje. I made 530 with a rather soft pole, then tried 545. I took the second place after the world youth champion Robert Renner, who made 535. My 530 jump was very promising, it was technically very clean, so I'm happy about that. After that I took a bigger pole and raised the bar to 545 and kinda got a bit scared of the stiffer pole. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't have any real tries at this height, but to be jumping technically good after losing a bit of shape and recover quickly from ankle injury was enough for today.

I was supposed to jump in Tampere on the 4th but I twisted my ankle the day before while shaking out. I was almost sure I wouldn't be able to jump in Vaasa on 7th. But I was able to walk and jog, so I gave it a try. There were 16 vaulters to warm up in about 30 minutes, so it was not really gonna happen. I managed to leave the ground from 12 steps and then kinda called it off. I told the officials I wouldn't jump because of an injury. Then suddenly I changed my mind for some reason and decided I was gonna try anyway. So I told the officials my starting height will be 490 instead of DNS, went back to the full approach and I ran through once to get the feeling of the run and check my midmark. I actually took off on the second try and made it! And after that I also made 510 and 525. At 535 my ankle clearly said NO, so I just ran through. It's a shame that I didn't use these two competitions for making a really good result, but it's all good, the injury is not bad and I can get ready for a few more competitions indoor and more importantly, to start getting ready soon for outdoors.

The competition in Vienna was another long one. It started at 413 and it took 2 and a half hours til it reached 513, which was my opening height. So I waited for 3 hours before my first jump. I started a bit higher in order to get ready for the higher level of jumping - you can't make 550+ bars if you're opening at 500 or less. I was in a really good shape and I easily made 513. Then I went to 533 and my run was even better, which resulted in all of my poles being too soft. Meaning I'm ready for the next pole and higher heights. Too bad I didn't see that coming yesterday already, since I could already be attempting some really high bars.