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Walt Murphy
PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:50 pm
From my “This Day in T&F” series:
(you can scroll down for the report on Yashchenko)
July `3 1977–I didn’t attend the school, but I’m a big fan of Manhattan College, where my cousin Tom had starred in the late 1950s. So, when Jasper freshman Sam Summerville qualified for the U.S. Junior team that would face a squad from the Soviet Union, I joined Manhattan alum Pierce Power on the drive from New York down to Richmond, Virginia, the site of the dual meet. Since it was going to be a warm weekend, we brought a cooler into the stadium, filled with various forms of liquid refreshment. Before we could quench our thirst for the first time, we were instructed by a local State Trooper that we had to remove the cooler from the stadium. We protested meekly, but, since the trooper didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, we removed the offensive cooler.
Not a good start, but we quickly turned our attention to the action on the track. On the first day of competition(July 2), we saw Renaldo Nehemiah, a recent graduate of Scotch Plains-Fanwood H.S.(NJ), win the 110-meter hurdles in 13.5, a National prep record over the 42” barriers.(The auto-timing system malfunctioned). On the second day, another prep record fell as Paul Lankford (Farmingdale,NY) won the 400-hurdles in 50.52 to break his own mark of 50.87, which was set the previous month when he won the U.S. Junior title. And Sam Summerville made our trip worthwhile by winning the men’s 800 in 1:48.1.
There were also a number of athletes who did well who would later become familiar names in the sport. Oregon freshman Alberto Salazar won the men’s 10,000-meters(29:14.8), with Jim Stintzi, now the head women’s coach at Wisconsin, finishing 2nd; Billy Olson won the men’s pole vault; Syracuse coach Chris Fox was 3rd in the men’s 5000; and 17-year old high school junior Lynn Jennings was 2nd in the women’s 1500-meters.
If nothing else had happened, most in attendance would have gone away thinking they had seen a pretty good meet, but the best was yet to come. Ukrainian Vladimir Yashchenko, a straddler, was already the World Junior Record holder, but no one was prepared for what they were about to witness. Yashchenko needed two jumps to clear 7-3(2.21m) and a new Junior mark of 7-5 3/4(2.28m), but then cleared 7-7(2.31m), a European Record, cleanly on his first attempt. The bar was then raised to 7-7 3/4(2.33m), one centimeter above Dwight Stones’s World Record of 7-7 1/4(2.32m). He cleared on his first attempt with room to spare, setting off a celebration by his Soviet teammates, who ran onto the infield to congratulate him.
When I yelled to Bob Hersh, who was covering the meet for T&F News, “Have you ever heard of this guy?”, he quickly replied, “Heard of him, he’s on my team!”. Hersh, always a step ahead of most game players, had already drafted the 18-year old for his international “Fantasy” team.
Yaschenko’s moment in the sun was a brief one. In 1978, he would set a Word Indoor Record of 7-8 1/2(2.35m) and raise his outdoor mark to 7-8(2.34m), but a serious knee injury forced him into early retirement in 1979, before he reached his 20th birthday. Tragically, he died at the young age of 40.
Related Links:
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Summerville, Sam [MC????]
Writer’s cousin Tom [MC????]
Power, Pierce (MC1952)
[JR: The internet eventually reports everything. Even decades old news.]
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