Not as easy as it looks: By Len Johnson

The act of doing something well often belies the difficulty of doing it at all.

Not always: Emil Zatopek never made running look easy, but he made it a darned side harder for those lumbering in his wake. But think of a Federer backhand, a Bekele surge, Tendulkar batting – part of the art is that all of them look simple.

So it was for a Steve Hooker pole vault for the magic years from 2006 to 2010. As he won the Commonwealth Games, the World Cup, the Olympic Games, the world championships and the world indoor championships, he built up an air of invincibility.

Why, it was all so easy he could do it off one leg, as Hooker memorably did in winning the Berlin 2009 world championships despite a strained quadriceps muscle restricting him to just three jumps – one in qualifying, two in the final.

That apparent ease masked the reality that vaulting is difficult – and dangerous. So difficult, in Hooker’s case, that he went for a year virtually unable to jump a bar early in his career. Those demons have returned to haunt him now, at pretty much the worst possible time in his Olympic preparation. 

“The confidence I require to stand at the end of the runway and then charge down, land my pole and soar almost six metres into the air has left me for the time being,” Hooker said this week.

The good news is that Hooker got through ‘the yips’ one time and he can get through them again. Despite an ordinary year last year, he has the Olympic B-standard so, other than the unlikely event of someone else getting the B (or, even less likely) the A-standard, he can be picked for London provided he is on the right track.

It hasn’t been a good few months at the sharp end of Australian athletics. Sally Pearson remains a shining light – though even she had an injury scare in a ‘pro’ race on a grass track just before Christmas.

Jared Tallent is going alright, too, but almost everyone else who has shown out in recent years has a query against them right at the minute.

Mitch Watt hasn’t been jumping due to a calf injury. (A report this week said that he and his support team were “on top of his calf”, which must make it even more uncomfortable.)

Our other top jumper, world indoor champion Fabrice Lapierre, has been struggling too, though he will resume competition in Perth this weekend. Last time he competed there, Lapierre cleared a wind-aided 8.78 metres. Let’s hope it is an omen.

Dani Samuels, 2009 world champion in the discus, has not shown anything like that form since, our 400 men are struggling to get anywhere near individual qualifying times (when they won a bronze medal in the Berlin 4x400, three of them were individual semi-finalists).

Javelinists Kim Mickle and Jarrod Bannister are off the scene, the former injured, the latter suspended for part of the season.

Then dual 400 hurdles world champion Jana Pittman has had an injection for plantar fasciitis, a potentially debilitating foot injury which, like Hooker’s problems, could hardly have come with worse timing.

Finally, there has been the storm that has erupted over the marathon qualifying standards – or, rather, Athletics Australia’s adjustment of the IAAF standard, the only event for which it has done so – which is likely to see anything up to half-a-dozen IAAF A-qualified athletes told that no, in fact they have not qualified.

With all the bullets flying around this week, the last thing you need is to come under ‘friendly fire’.

Back in the lead-up to Sydney 2000, team manager Peter Brukner and head coach Chris Wardlaw had regular media briefings at which, among other things, they ran through the injury list. Many wondered if it was worth it, as the downside was an inevitable negative story on injuries.

Better, the counterview then was, not to have the briefings unless you had something positive to say. And that has been the approach since. It works a treat, too, until you get swept away by an avalanche of bad news, as happened this week.

No doubt everyone is fervently hoping Perth marks the reversal of this trend.