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An official mess Dragila stars in pole vault soap opera
Stacy Dragila came up against more foes than she bargained for in winning the world pole vault title in Edmonton on Monday. The wind turned on her repeatedly. The leader board turned on her every time Svetlana Feofanova of Russia cleared a succeeding height on her first attempts. Even bungling officials turned the standings around when they invalidated several missed attempts in one of several delays that plagued the event. But in the end, Dragila cleared 4.75 meters, slightly off the 4.81 world record she set at Stanford earlier this year. Feofanova cleared the same height, but finished second because of an earlier miss. The drama that played out over four hours was at times riveting and at times tedious. As victories go, Dragila, the Olympic champ and multiple world record holder, called it "the best." "When you have someone on your heels like that making first attempts, I'd rank it No. 1," Dragila said. "It was more a mental game than physical out there. To have one delay after another, to be out there for four hours was really screwy." The soap opera played out like this: Dragila was one of five vaulters who attempted clearances at 4.50 meters. She had missed her first attempt and cleared on a subsequent try. But she and another vaulter noticed that the bar appeared to be set at the wrong height. Officials initially dismissed Dragila's inquiry, but after several other vaulters questioned the setting, officials double- and triple-checked manually what the automatic settings indicated and found that the settings were incorrect. The vaulters, including Dragila, who missed their first attempts, had their misses discounted. Because she was one of those who had missed, Dragila jumped from third place into first without even vaulting. Monika Pyrek of Poland who had cleared the height on her first attempt, then fell to third place, her final standing for the evening. "I asked the officials, 'was it right?'" Dragila explained, "One said 'yes'; the other said 'no.' I just told myself not to worry about it. Then I made the next jump and they came back and said it was wrong for five of the jumps. This would never happen at a world championship, would it?" After that distraction, officials delayed the meet again with the bar set at 4.55 because the standards, which determine the spot at the base of the jump from which the count begins, was also improperly set. Finally Dragila and Feofanova began to match each other leap for leap in what was turning into the greatest women's pole vault confrontation in history. "I knew after the way Svetlana was competing at the European meets it would come down to serious bars today," Dragila said. "When it came down to 60, 65, 70, I didn't think Svetlana could match me jump for jump. I don't think any competition I've been in at those heights has been that close." It hadn't. The event marked the first time in history that two women in the same competition had scaled as high as 4.55. "I was frustrated with myself, not with her," Dragila said. "Each time she cleared, I thought, 'Oh, I have to get myself up for another one.'" After both women cleared 4.75 meters, the bar would normally be raised to 4.80. But with a $100,000 bonus available for a world record performance and both vaulters already tired from the jumps and delays, Dragila and Feofanova agreed to have the bar raised to 4.82 -- .01 above the existing world record -- for the next series of jumps. This had been common practice in European meets when two vaulters were left in a competition. But, again, the officials took another 15 minutes to decide if they would allow the bar to be set at 4.82. "I asked Svetlana and she said, 'let's go,'" Dragila said. "Then one official said, 'you can't do that.' We said, 'yeah, it's in the rules.' Then they started talking to each other again. It was just a mess. It came down to officials not knowing what was going on. If the equipment is that good and the officials are that aware of what to do, then let's go back to the put-it-up-yourself bar." With officials rechecking the standards after every miss, both women failed in their three tries at the world record height, leaving Dragila, with no misses before 4.75, as the gold medalist and Feofanova, with one miss, as a frustrated silver medalist. "No, when you are this close, second is not so OK," said Feofanova, who joined Dragila in a victory lap. "It's too close to be really happy." Even Dragila seemed unsatisfied with her victory. "I like to jump back-to-back. I don't like to wait," she said. "The time delays between jumps were just getting stupid. I felt you could have seen a world record today by me and Svetlana, but we kept having to deal with officials. It kind of spoiled what should have been a day of history." Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the
magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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