High hopes drive Walker in Beijing

The father tells people – and he has told enough that the son has given up rolling his eyes in exasperation – that this all began just out of the crib. No pole, no landing pit, no Olympic flame giving off so much as a flicker to capture Brad Walker’s athletic imagination.

“I started him jumping off his changer into my arms and yelling, ‘Superman!’ ” Tom Walker recalled. “Then he started going off the dresser and anywhere else he could get some height, and we’d have to be ready for, ‘Here’s Superman!’ ”

And, inevitably, came the one time Dad wasn’t ready.

“He was about 3 and my hands were full of grocery bags,” he said. “He comes flying off the back seat of the Blazer and lands chin first on the concrete steps of the house. That was pretty much the end of it.”

Oh, on the contrary. The end is not in sight.

• • •

It has been 88 years since an athlete who graduated from a Spokane high school medaled in track and field at the Olympic Games.

Carl Johnson – Lewis and Clark, class of 1915 – was a senior at the University of Michigan when he finished sixth in the long jump at the 1920 AAU championships, which then served as the Olympic Trials. In those days, the United States wasn’t limited to just three qualifiers, so a week or so later Johnson set sail for Antwerp, Belgium, and wound up winning the silver medal with a jump of 23 feet, 3 1/4 inches.

To say expectations are slightly loftier for Brad Walker is a gold medal truth in both the literal and figurative.

A 1999 graduate of University High School, Walker is the American record holder in the pole vault – 19-9 3/4, set earlier this summer at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene. He also ranked No. 1 in the world in both 2005 and 2007.

But this is Olympics and this is the pole vault, surely the most volatile of track’s disciplines.

The weightiness of the role and the moment hardly fill Walker with dread, but he’s not even sure he is the favorite – Russia’s Yevgeniy Lukyanenko and Australia’s Steve Hooker have also topped 6 meters, or 19-8 1/4, and Lukyanenko has beaten Walker both times they’ve met this year.

“That’s a question not everybody agrees on,” Walker said. “I was reading Sports Illustrated the other day and they had me with the silver. There are three guys in the mix right now and any of us can jump high enough to go out there and win.

“Being a favorite in the most uncertain event there is really doesn’t mean anything.”

And for proof, he pointed to the U.S. trials in Eugene, where he struggled in the swirling winds and finished third, claiming the last spot on the team to Beijing.

But he also has a history of performing well on the biggest stages under some adverse conditions – as he did last year when he won the World Championship in Osaka despite bulged discs in his back that limited him to six practices the entire year.

“I wouldn’t say that I don’t feel pressure at big meets,” Walker has said, “but it’s a matter of taking that energy, with all eyes on you, and putting it in the right direction.”

• • •

The coach tells people that it all began in his backyard.

Walker volunteered for pole vault in the seventh grade at Horizon Junior High, and fell under the tutelage of an airline pilot named Reg Hulbert who couldn’t get enough flying in his plane.

“He got most of his training in my backyard,” Hulbert said. “I used to have a pit there and he and Jeff Wineinger would come over on their bikes and knock on the door and ask my wife, ‘Can Reg come out?’ ”

The runway was 50 feet (“that’s all you’d want because it was downhill,” Hulbert laughed) and with each pass the coach saw Walker’s trademark persistence – though maybe not a lot more.

It was Wineinger and not Walker who won the state meet for U-Hi as a junior, when Walker grew frustrated at not being able to improve on his sophomore best of 14 feet.

“I remember that,” said Wineinger, now a production manager for an electronic sign company in Spokane who roomed with Walker in college and remains a close friend. “We were always competitive, but in a positive way, and about that time I was doing all right and he didn’t like to take a back seat to that. But he was so driven that I think it just fueled him to figure out what was wrong and move beyond that.”

And what was wrong, according to Hulbert, was absolutely fundamental.

“It takes a lot of courage to take your eye off the bar and swing upside down,” he said. “That’s how you vault above your hand hold and that’s really not something that you can teach – at some point, a kid just has to have the courage and confidence to do it. And about halfway through his senior year, Brad was able to let go.”

And never stopped. From Horizon to U-Hi to the University of Washington and beyond, there have been just two seasons when the 27-year-old Walker hasn’t been able to improve on his best – that frustrating junior year of high school, and 2007 when he was so rarely able to practice. Only three men in history – topped by the incomparable Sergey Bubka and his outdoor world record of 20-1 1/2 – have vaulted higher.

“Now,” said Hulbert, “he swings vertical about as tight to the pole as any vaulter in the world.”

• • •

The qualifying round to pare the field to 12 finalists begins Wednesday morning about 5:40 Pacific time. Walker has competed against and beaten every other vaulter entered.

Here’s the difference: now the world is watching.

Walker understands the distinction, even as he tries to mitigate it.

“The World Championships are the same track meet,” he said, “and yet this is the ultimate of track and field. This is what we put all our heart and dedication into.

“If the Olympics didn’t exist, we would still do what we do – but it’s the pinnacle. And to be on the team and representing the USA is an incredible honor and responsibility.”

You will hear more about the responsibility. The early days of track and field competition in Beijing have not been kind to the Americans – in fact, they’ve been a disaster. Thus the pressure has been ratcheted up for subsequent events they’re expected to do well in – the 400, the intermediate hurdles, the relays, the decathlon. And, yes, the pole vault. Walker is trying to become the third straight U.S. Olympic champion in the event.

“I’m ready,” he said. “I’ve been putting up big bars, I feel good and I’m confident. It’s great to know that if I put together a good meet, I can come out on top.”

• • •

Maybe it started with Dad egging on a pre-school Superman, or jumping in the pilot’s backyard. Maybe seeing a teammate win a state championship triggered Walker’s desire, or maybe clearing 19 feet as a Husky junior gave him a window into the possibilities.

The jury is just as hung on the matter of whether anyone saw Brad Walker’s destiny out there ahead of him.

“Not really,” Hulbert admitted. “I could see he’d never take second place for an answer, but I really thought Tyson Byers, who I coached a few years later, had more potential.”

Even now, said Tom Walker, “This doesn’t seem real.

“We’re going to China,” he marveled. “It’s just one of those things where you’re supposed to be talking about somebody else’s kid, not yours.”

Jeff Wineinger will also be in Beijing, but he finds it entirely believable.

“I never doubted it,” he said. “We had a conversation a long time ago and I remember him saying, ‘Man, it would be the coolest thing ever to pole vault for a living.’ And I just thought, ‘That’s what Brad’s going to do.’ As driven as he is, I just had no doubt this day would come.”