Pole vault stars Renaud Lavillenie and Jenn Suhr lit up the World Indoor Athletics Championships on Thursday as the first major event since Russia was banned got under way. French Olympic champion Lavillenie produced a display of swaggering brilliance to romp to gold at the Oregon Convention Center. The 29-year-old from Clermont-Ferrand needed only two jumps to take gold with a clearance at 5.90m before putting the seal on a superb night's work with a new championship record of 6.02m.
Lavillenie then delighted the Portland crowd with three attempts at 6.17m, which would have broken his own world record of 6.16m, but failed with each. Yet victory was sweet for Lavillenie as he reclaimed the title he last won in Istanbul in 2012. Injury robbed him of the chance to defend the crown at the last indoor championships in Sopot, Poland two years ago. Sam Kendricks of the United States took silver with Poland's Piotr Lisek claiming bronze.
Lavillenie revealed he had been plotting the win ever since his disappointing third place finish in last year's World Outdoor Championships in Beijing. "I started thinking about the indoors almost the day after Beijing," Lavillenie said. "Beijing was a huge disappointment. I wanted to show here that I'm still around." Lavillenie drew gasps on his second unsuccessful world record attempt after tangling his feet in the bar and plummeting towards the vault box before adjusting and landing safely.
"It's not so often I do something like that, but pole vault is sometimes very dangerous and intense, and that's why we love it," he said. Women's pole vault Olympic champion Suhr had earlier bagged the first gold medal of the championships with a similarly imperious display. The 34-year-old US star - whose previous best finish at a world indoors was a silver medal in 2008 - took gold with a championship record clearance of 4.90m. Sandi Morris of the United States took silver, while Ekaterini Stefanidi of Greece claimed the bronze. Suhr briefly flirted with a world record attempt but said a sore calf deterred her. "My calf was pretty tight; I started the season healthy and I want to end the season healthy," said Suhr.
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