The uprights are dancing in joy these days. And Mutaz Essa Barshim, who won the Asian Games gold here on Monday, is the main reason for that.
The Qatari high jumper has come so close to the world record — he is just three centimetres away from breaking it — and every time he competes in a meet, people look forward to it.
So, when does he hope to break Cuban Javier Sotomayor’s 21-year-old mark of 2.45m? And will he need the Ukrainian world champion Bohdan Bondarenko to push him up each time as he has been doing in the last few meets?
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“For the world record, certainly not. I need God first of all, need to be healthy, need to feel good, need to be in good shape, need to be good mentally and I need good crowd support,” Mutaz, the world No. 1 and the biggest star in athletics at the 17th Asian Games, told
“To topple the world record, you need perfect conditions, When everything comes together at the right moment, that when it’s going to come. You know, it’s one hit, the world record.”
Happy yearADVERTISEMENT
High jump, one of the most glamorous events in athletics, has not seen a happy year like this in a very long time. For a sport which failed to touch the 2.40m-mark for 13 years, after Russian Vyacheslav Voronin reached that height in 2000, the event overcame that mental block last year with three jumpers going over that mark. And Mutaz soared to a personal best of 2.43m in Brussels early this year.
Mutaz, who was born and brought up in Qatar though his roots are in Sudan, is just 23 and that opens up some very exciting possibilities for him.
So, does he think 2.50m is possible? “Of course, it’s possible. I can do it and in the future somebody else can do it too,” said the world championship silver medallist. Surprisingly, Mutaz began as a race walker, then a distance runner and later a long jumper. He tried the high jump for the first time at 15!