Skipper Slated For Pre Classic Pole Vault
EUGENE - A week after he won the NCAA outdoor pole vault crown, University of Oregon freshman Tommy Skipper will raise the bar higher and will compete in the Prefontaine Classic pole vault field.
The international-caliber meet begins Saturday, June 19 at noon Pacific Time and lasts until 3 pm. Skipper’s event will start at 1:08 pm, and the meet will conclude with a special recognition of former Duck sub-4:00 milers before the final event, the Bowerman Mile.
The meet will be televised Saturday evening (6/19) by ESPN2 from 6:30?8:00 p.m. Pacific Time, and again by ESPN, Sat., July 31 at 1-2:30 am Pacific Time. Tickets are available at the
www.GoDucks.com website or by calling (541) 346-4461 locally or 1-800-WEB-FOOT. More meet information is available at the www.PreClassic.com website.
The 6-2 native of Sandy, Ore., Skipper will face the biggest challenge of his young career in the nine-man field that features an Olympic champion, a world champion, three of the top nine highest vaulters ever. His recent personal best, school and Pac-10 record of 18-10 1/4 (5.75m) from the West Regional, Sat., May 29 in Northrdige, Calif., is the second-lowest of the field.
However, don’t count the frisky freshman out yet since he is on a roll from the recent championship slate. In last Saturday’s NCAA Championships in Austin, Texas (6/12), he claimed the Ducks’ third NCAA pole vault win in school history and first since 1937. He made the most of his 11 attempts in the competition, with first- and second-attempt makes at his opening three heights, then sealed the win with a third-attempt clearance at his second-highest ever clearance outdoors (first, 18-8 1/4), ahead of UCLA’s soon-to-be Korean Olympian Yoo Kim (second, national record 18-4 1/2), and Nebraska’s Eric Eshbach (third, 18-4 1/2). Skipper then asked that the bar go up to 19-1 1/2 (5.83) to break the NCAA outdoor meet record of Lawrence Johnson of Tennessee from his 1996 win in Eugene (19-1, 5.82m), but missed his three tries.
Overall in the NCAA team race, Skipper was one of five All-Americans for the Men of Oregon, and his 10 points helped the Ducks to ninth place with 27 points - their fifth top-20 finish under sixth-year head coach Martin Smith. The Men of Oregon also went top-20 outdoors in 2001 (ninth, 27) and 2003 (13th, 19 1/4), and indoors in 2002 (ninth, 15) and 2004 (18th, 13). Heading into the meet, the Ducks’ 13 entries were projected to score 14 points and finish 21st by Trackwire.
Two weeks before at May’s end, he took the lead on the collegiate outdoor season best list with his school and Pac-10 record vault in the West Regional (18-10 1/4, 5.75m). Earlier in the championship slate in mid-May he helped propel the Ducks to second in the Pac-10 team race with his wins in the pole vault (his then-second highest outdoor mark of 18-3 1/4, 5.57m) and decathlon (NCAA automatic 7,589, and #8 all-time for UO) and fifth-place finish in the javelin with a personal best (215-2).
Overall in the 2004 outdoor season, he has competed in the pole vault in six meets and cleared 18-3 or better in the last three and 17-5 all of them (not including the NCAA prelims which stopped at 17-4 1/2, 5.30m). Only two other vaulters had cleared 18-4 or better during the regular sason - Nebraska’s Eshbach (18-8 1/2), and Cal State Fullerton’s Giovanni Lannaro (third, 18-4 1/2).
This week’s Pre field is headlined by another recent Pac-10 sensation - ex-Stanford jumper Toby Stevenson - who owned the previous Pac-10 record of 18-9 1/4 that he jumped as a senior in the 2000 Pacific-10 Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene.
This season the 27-year-old Texan-turned-Californian is one of the world’s hottest vaulters and has already cleared 19 feet four times this season - including thrice outdoors the past month at the Modesto Relays (9 3/4-inch PR, 19-8 1/4, 6.00m), Phoenix (19-5 3/4, 5.94m) and Payton Jordan US Open in Stanford (19-2 1/4, 5.85m). Among other prior major accomplishments, he won the 2004 U.S. indoor title (19-0 1/4) and 2003 PanAm title (17-10 1/2). At the collegiate level, he was a six-time All-American for the Cardinal, including the 1998 NCAA champion and 2000 NCAA runner-up. He is only the ninth person ever in the world to clear 6.00 meters (19-8 1/4) - and his mark from Modesto is the highest since 2001 when Australian Dmitri Markov vaulted 19-10 1/4 (6.05) to win the World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Saturday’s Pre field will also include several other of the top American post-collegains that rank among the world’s best, including U.S. record holder Jeff Hartwig (19-9 1/4 PR (6.03m) in 2000, recent season bests of 19-3 1/2 outdoors in 2004, 19-0 1/4 outdoors in 2003, 19-9 indoors in 2002 and 19-4 1/4 in 2001), Derek Miles (PR 19-1 in 2001, season bests of 19-0 1/4 in 2004 and 19-0 3/4 in 2002), Tim Mack (PR 19-2 1/4 in 2002, season bests of 18-8 1/4 in 2004 and 18-10 1/4 in 2003) and Nick Hysong, the 2000 Olympic Champion (19-4 1/4 PR in ?00 (and ranked first in the world by TFN), season bests of 18-4 1/2 indoors in 2004 and 18-10 1/4 in 2002).
Another recent former league NCAA champion, Washington’s two-time winner Brad Walker, owned a 19-0 1/4 best from the 2003 indoor season, and cleared 19-1 outdoors in 2004 in Phoenix in mid-May.
The field will also welcome University of Oregon grad Piotr Buciarski who will represent Denmark in the 2004 Olympics this August in Athens, Greece. At the international level, he competed in World Championships in 2001 (15th) and 2003 (23rd), and owns an all-time best of 18-10 from 2004. As a collegian for the Ducks in 1997, ?98 and 99, he won Pac-10 titles in 1997 (17-8 1/2) and 1999 (17-11 1/4), and was an All-American in 1997 (outdoors-eighth, 17-2 3/4) and 1998 (indoors-third, 18-0 1/2; outdoors-seventh, 17-4 1/2). The current Eugene resident still ranks fourth on the Ducks allt-time list with his 18-2 1/2 from 1999) behind Skipper (18-10 1/4), and Olympians Kory Tarpenning (18-6 1/2, 1985) and Tom Hintnaus (18-4 1/2, 1980).
Also in Saturday’s field, naturalized Australian and former Belarussian Dmitri Markov owns the meet’s top personal best from his 2001 World Champs win (meet record 19-9) in Edmonton. He first cleared 6.00m (18-8 1/4) in 1998 in his first season down under. A year later in 1999, he was officially OK’ed to vault for Australia and went on to win silver in those World Championships in Seville, Spain, and the next year took fifth in the 2000 Olympics (19-0 1/4, 5.80m). Last season he took fourth in the World Champs in Paris, France (19-2 1/4, 5.85m) - the same height as second place but with more misses.
Looking ahead to later summer action, three Ducks - Skipper, sophomore 110 hurdler Eric Mitchum and junior javelin thrower Sarah Malone - are automatically qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials, July 9-18 at Cal State Sacramento’s Hornet Stadium. The 2003 National Boys Athlete of the Year Skipper first met the Olympic Trials A qualifying standard indoors in 2004 with the nation’s top collegiate indoor mark and then-school record in early February (18-8 3/4), and then posted his then-second best mark indoors in the NCAA Championships (second, 18-4 1/2).
More Olympic Trials meet information is located at the
www.SacSports.com website, and U.S. rankings are available at the www.usatf.org and www.trackandfieldnews.com websites.
2004 Prefontaine Classic Pole Vault Field
Date: Sat., June 19
Pole Vault Field - www.GoDucks.com -
Start: 1:08 pm Pacific Time
Location: Hayward Field, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.
Meet Info: www.PreClassic.com
Tickets: (541) 346-4461 (locally) / 1-800-WEB-FOOT / www.GoDucks.com
Piotr Buciarski (Denmark)
Jeff Hartwig
Nick Hysong
Tim Mack
Dmitri Markov (Australia)
Derek Miles
Tommy Skipper
Toby Stevenson
Brad Walker
