After winning Olympic gold and breaking one of the most iconic world records on the books, the next major milestone on the road to global domination for Renaud Lavillenie is the European Athletics Championships. The flying French pole vaulter has a special reason for wanting to win his third straight European title in Zurich next month. “For me the Europeans are really important because I am on a good winning streak and if I win in Zurich it will be 20 in a row,” he said. “That’s a personal record for me, and it would be the perfect place to do it. The Europeans is a great competition so I’m really excited to be there.” Lavillenie’s first European title came in Barcelona four years ago. It was also his first gold medal at any outdoor championships and he went on to add a second European crown in Helsinki two years ago before claiming the Olympic title in London later that summer. This winter he stunned the whole sporting world when he cleared 6.16m at the All-Stars meeting in Donetsk, stealing Sergey Bubka’s 21-year-old world record from under the great man’s nose in his home country of Ukraine. It was the culmination of an extraordinary 2014 indoor season in which the 27-year-old vaulted 6m or higher five times and raised the French record three times in three competitions. But he missed the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Sopot with a foot injury, and so the Europeans in Zurich will be his first championship contest since he lost to Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe at the Moscow World Championships last August. So far this outdoor season, Lavillenie has failed to hit the heights he achieved indoors. His world lead stands at 5.92 from Shanghai in May, but he has not gone over six metres yet. more
