Hooker ready to return

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http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-sp ... 1gdbi.html


Steve Hooker ready to vault
John Salvado
June 21, 2011 - 6:44PM
AAP

Having fully recovered from a serious knee injury, Steve Hooker is ready to take a less is more approach into the defence of his pole vault world title in South Korea.

Hooker competed virtually non-stop for nine months in 2010 and was physically and mentally spent by the time he won a second straight Commonwealth Games title in New Delhi in October.

Five difficult months followed before he admitted to Australian head coach Eric Hollingsworth in March that a longstanding patella tendon problem in his left knee was not responding to treatment.

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Hollingsworth put Hooker in contact with one of Athletics Australia's leading physios and things finally started to improve.

Hooker vaulted off his full run-up in training for the first time this year on Tuesday, a day before heading to his European base in London.

He only plans to compete in three or four meets this year before the world championships in Daegu starting in late August - a far cry from the never-to-be-repeated marathon campaign of 2010.

"It's been a challenging couple of months to be honest, mentally and physically," the reigning Olympic and world champion said in a teleconference on Tuesday.

"Working through an injury over such a long period of time is tough and getting out of the rhythm of jumping and having to find that again.

"It's been a long time since I have competed so I am looking forward to that.

"That is what I have always loved about the sport more than the training.

"I am looking forward in my first competition, probably in Monaco on July 22, standing on the runway and having a real crack at it."

Hooker has also pencilled in meets in Leverkusen, Germany on July 30 and London in early August before switching his focus to the world championships.

"It is a funny set-up because there is quite a long time between competitions in Europe and when the competition starts in Korea," said Hooker.

"It does give me a small window of time when I can do competitions and I don't want to make the mistake of last year when I did too much and wore my body down.

"For me it's going to be about trying to do high-quality competitions in good venues and get good results in those meets rather than spreading myself too thin."

Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie currently sits atop the 2011 world rankings, with 2007 world champ Brad Walker from the United States and Germany's Malte Mohr also showing some impressive form.

"I love it when there's a lot of guys jumping high," said Hooker, who predicted it would take a vault of 6m or more to claim gold in Daegu.

"In the last couple of years there's only been one or two.

"But this year it looks like there will be four or five guys jumping high and for medals."