Hooker finds Olympic strength in retro afro

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http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/beijin ... 52,00.html

Hooker finds Olympic strength in retro afro
Jenny McAsey | August 05, 2008 08:02am


'I don't think I'll cut it between now and the Olympics, though that's not necessarily superstition,' Hooker says of his hair.
POLE vaulters generally draw notice for their ability to leap a bar perched a few storeys high, but Australian medal hopeful Steve Hooker and his American rival Brad Walker will stand out in Beijing for other reasons.
Hooker and Walker, the reigning world champion in the daredevil event, will both attempt to break the Olympic record and leap more than 6m in the final; in the meantime, they are taking their hair almost as seriously as their vaulting.
The Australian, ranked world No1 in 2006, has not cut his hair since the beginning of 2007 and now sports a retro, afro mop of golden curls, which he restrains with a white headband.
Walker, on the other hand, either cuts or radically re-styles his brown hair before every event. At the Osaka world championships last year he shaved lightning bolts into his scalp. This year, he has gone for a black mohawk with bleached blond sides, though his look is sure to change before the Olympics start.

Pole vaulters are by nature unconventional types; as Hooker has often said, you have to be a little crazy to repeatedly launch yourself sky-high attached to a fibreglass pole.
"I like it long," Hooker said of his hair.
"It hasn't been cut for one-and-a-half years, since the start of 2007 when I did the World's Greatest Shave and shaved my head. I don't think I'll cut it between now and the Olympics, though that's not necessarily superstition."
But Observers of the pole vault should be on the lookout not only for radical hairdos but also radical jumping when the Olympic final is held on August 22.
Hooker and Walker share more than a love of unusual locks. Both men have cleared the elusive 6m mark this year, and, along with Russia's Yevgeny Lukyanenko, who has also cleared the mark in 2008, they are the Olympic medal favourites. Only once before in the history of the event have three men cleared 6m or more in the same year, signalling this could be the best Olympic pole vault competition yet.
In London last week, both Hooker and Lukyanenko cleared 5.97m - the first time two men had cleared that height at the same competition - and the Russian won on a countback. The result also bettered the Olympic record of 5.95m. (The world record is 6.14m, set by Sergey Bubka in 1994, a mark no one else has come close to.)
Hooker treated London as a mock Olympics, and he believes there will be better to come at the real thing.
"I think the winner will jump six metres," he said. "With all three of us pushing up towards that height and jumping high recently it is pretty clear someone is going to take it to that level at the Olympics, if not more than one person."
As for the favourite, Hooker, who cleared 6m in January, nominates Lukyanenko.
"Brad has jumped the highest but ... Yevgeny is undefeated against me and Brad this year, he has beaten me three times and Brad twice," Hooker said.
"So going in, he is the guy with the more consistent form out of the three of us. But there is not a lot in it.''