All-Time Best Junior Marks

[roger/over]

Becca's post about Monterola's new Venezuelan junior record (4.25m/13'11 1/4") sent me to Mirko Jalava's website (www.tilastopaja.net) to see where this might place her on the all-time juniors' list. I thought I remembered that he had an all-time top-20 in the part of his site that doesn't require subscription to access. I found that was right. Before I go back to the juniors, let me detour to tell those who don't already know, that the non-subscription section also includes lists of current world leaders in each event, latest results from major meets, current world top 20, and world all-time top 30. That's lots of information for free!

What else is left? The "members-only" section provides world deep lists (usually more than 500 deep for the vaults) for the current season and all other indoor and outdoor seasons since 1996, biographies of athletes who have appeared on the deep lists in that time, full results for most major meets of the current season, and a fun program that offers head-to-head results for any two athletes in the meets they have competed together. I took a quick look at Dragila vs. Feofanova and found they have competed against one another 33 times, with Feofanova placing higher in 22 of these.

Anyway, have a look at the juniors lists for more detail than I'm about to provide--birthdate, place and date of the competion when his or her junior PB was recorded, etc. I'll copy, below, the names, countries, and best junior height of the top 20 men and women. Three notes that caught my special interest:

Monterola's 4.25 will place her at #20 on the women's list (tied at #18, but Mirko always breaks ties on the basis of date of the performance).

I was surprised at how many of the top 20 junior women are German (7) and how few were American (2). I wonder why that should be? Maybe because the lack of track clubs in the U.S. severely restricts access to good vault coaching for most high-school students?

I was mildly shocked to see Radion Gataullin's name on the list. Can you imagine still being sixth-best-ever junior 21 years after the 1984 meet when the mark was set? And in 2001, his last season of competition, matching that 5.65m (18'6 1/4") while placing 38th in the world!

Cheers!


All-time Best Female Juniors

1 4.46 Yelena Isinbayeva RUS
2 4.42 Yvonne Buschbaum GER
3 4.41 Floé Kühnert GER
4 4.41 Silke Spiegelburg GER
5 4.40 Zhao Yingying CHN
6 4.35 Yuliya Golubchikova RUS
7 4.31 Monika Götz GER
8 4.31 Amandine Homo FRA
9 4.31 Anna Schultze GER
10 4.30 Annika Becker GER
11 4.30 Katerina Badurová CZE
12 4.30 Vanessa Boslak FRA
13 4.30 Natalya Belinskaya RUS
14 4.30 Wu Sha CHN
15 4.30 Lisa Ryshich GER
16 4.27 Lacy Janson USA
17 4.25 Brigid Isworth AUS
18 4.25 Jenny Green USA
19 4.25 Ekateríni Stefanídi GRE
20 4.21 Amy Linnen USA
21 4.21 Aleksandra Kiryashova RUS

All-time Best Male Juniors

1 5.80 Maksim Tarasov URS
2 5.72 Konstadínos Filippídis GRE
3 5.71 Lawrence Johnson USA
4 5.70 Viktor Chistiakov RUS
5 5.70 Artem Kuptsov RUS
6 5.65 Radion Gataullin URS/UZB
7 5.65 István Bagyula HUN
8 5.62 Gérald Baudouin FRA
9 5.62 Jacob Davis USA
10 5.62 Lars Börgeling GER
11 5.61 Thierry Vigneron FRA
12 5.61 Danny Ecker GER
13 5.61 Vasiliy Petrov RUS
14 5.60 Konstantin Volkov URS/RUS
15 5.60 Andrey Grudinin RUS
16 5.60 Russ Buller USA
17 5.60 Paul Burgess AUS
18 5.60 Adam Ptácek CZE
19 5.60 Oleksandr Korchmyd UKR
20 5.60 Kevin Rans BEL
21 5.60 Matti Mononen FIN

[rainbowgirl28]

I was surprised at how many of the top 20 junior women are German (7) and how few were American (2). I wonder why that should be? Maybe because the lack of track clubs in the U.S. severely restricts access to good vault coaching for most high-school students?

That's a factor. I think the fact that US vaulters generally start at a later age is a big factor too. Most US vaulters don't start until 14, while it seems like most of the europeans start between ages 9-12.