Second best no longer good enough for soaring Vlasic

By Andrew James Aug 20, 2007, 9:52 GMT

Osaka, Japan - Blanka Vlasic is giving a strong indication that she doesn't want to be remembered as a high jumper who achieved big jumps without getting a medal at a major championship.

Last year at the European championships in Gothenburg, the Croatian Vlasic soared 2.01m, but that was only good enough for fourth place behind Tia Hellabaud, Venelina Veneva (both 2.03) and Kajsa Bergqvist (2.01m and lesser attempts).

Vlasic is a former junior world champion, but has never won a major title, her best results being silver and bronze at the world indoors. She has flopped at past outdoor worlds - sixth in 2001, seventh in 2003 and failing to qualify for the final in 2005.

However, this is expected to change at the Osaka worlds.

The 23-year-old has been classy in recent weeks, raising her personal outdoor best from 2.03m on three occasions to now 2.07m, on August 7 in Stockholm.

Only world record holder Stefka Kostadinova has jumped higher outdoors, 2.09m at the 1987 worlds, and Vlasic is ready to attack that mark as well.

'The world record will be mine. I don't know when this will happen, but I know I can,' Vlasic told Croatia's Vecernji List daily.

The Stockholm result will only add to her confidence for Osaka, but she kept the celebration short.

'This is a top result for Croatian sport, but we can't celebrate much because waiting are the world championships, where we'll be going for gold,' she said.

Croatia have never medalled at the athletics worlds and victory in Japan would put Vlasic in the same league as national sports heroes Janica Kostelic and Goran Ivansevic.

Vlasic has athletics in her name and veins.

She was named Blanka in reference to the Moroccan city of Casablanca, where her father Josko was competing in the Mediterranean Games at around the time of her birth.

Her mother Venera was a basketball player and cross-country skier. Her father Josko still holds the Croatian decathlon record, 7,659 points achieved in 1983 (then for Yugoslavia), and later became an athletics coach.

'My father was on the field all the time. Sometimes when I couldn't stay home alone, he brought me along. So I started to like it there,' she once said. Vlasic said she tried everything else before becoming a high jumper, with athletics suiting her personality well.

'I was very stubborn, and I didn't like group sports. I like to work alone. When I make a mistake, I make it on my own. I'm guilty of that. And when I win, it's all mine,' she said.