A Soaring Spirit, and Skill to Match : Track and field: Pole vaulter Bubka has used an indomitable will, talent to set 28 world records.

Sergei Bubka has just been hustled off a flight from Japan. He had been scrunched into an airplane seat for 12 hours. After an unscheduled delay in San Francisco, he lands in Los Angeles and steps into one of the worst storms to ever hit Southern California.

Now he’s standing at a lectern while journalists shout questions in impossibly fast English. He leans forward, tilting his head while intently listening. Bubka is a Ukrainian who grew up speaking Russian, but he says he will try to answer in English.

And, although there is an interpreter, Bubka refuses help.

This is the essence of Sergei Bubka. The greatest pole vaulter of all time, he has thrived on the difficult, the unallowed and the risky. The little boy who defied his father and had to sneak out to practice; the young man who ignored Soviet authorities and rejected their oppressive demands; the man who has conquered the sports world because of his stubborn will and unvanquished spirit.

Bubka, 28, will compete in the pole vault in Saturday night’s Sunkist Invitational at the Sports Arena, and he will show up with his 28 world records, nearly a record for records. The last time he was in Los Angeles, Feb. 21, 1986, he set a world record at the Times Indoor Games.

It has been one record after another for Bubka. In 1991 he set eight world records, four indoors and four out. He became the first man over 20 feet in the pole vault, a feat he accomplished four times. His indoor world record is 20 feet 1 inch, but when he cleared the 20-foot mark for the first time last March at San Sebastian, Spain, he said: “This is my special gift to the people of the United States, and I dedicate this record to them.”

Vintage Bubka. The remark was sure to irritate most of the track world, which counts its records in meters, not feet. Bubka knew that the six-meter mark was the true goal in pole vaulting, a mark he had already bettered. But he also knew that for Americans, 20 feet held a certain fascination.

Bubka was also aware that some officials in the Soviet track and field federation would be disgusted at his apparent pandering to the West.

But Bubka has always given officials the back of his hand even as he gave them the best of his athletic ability. Bubka always reminded bewildered reporters that he was Ukrainian, before anyone had a political context for the declaration.

When Bubka began breaking world records and track promoters paid the Soviet federation thousands of dollars that he had earned, Bubka remembered. Any person or system that conspired to hold him back became fuel for Bubka’s passion to soar higher.

Gain knowledge my brothers; think, read!

Study the culture of foreigners

But do not forsake your own,

For the one that forgets his mother is punished by God.

--TARAS SHEVCHENKO, Ukrainian patriot and poet.

Bubka says he did not choose the pole vault, it chose him. “Some of the boys in my neighborhood took me to this pole vault,” he said. “I start.”

Bubka was 12 years old. He was introduced to one of the finest technical coaches in the event, Vitaly Petrov, who convinced him that one day he would fly higher than anyone.

When Bubka was 15, Petrov moved to Donetsk, which had the largest indoor track facility in Ukraine. In order to progress, he told Bubka, you must come with me. The teen-ager was torn. His parents were divorcing. His beloved older brother, Vasily, went to live with his father. Bubka was to stay with his mother, lest she lose everyone.

Bubka wanted to go his own way, to Donetsk with Petrov, but he stayed with his mother. But she knew her son’s heart. Valentina Bubka sent her young son to Donetsk, knowing that his heart longed for vaulting.

Bubka blossomed in his own headstrong way. He listened to no one but his coach. When foot injuries became a recurring problem, doctors told Bubka to quit. He ignored them. He was seething with desire to be the best.

That happened at the world’s biggest meet in an unexpected manner. In 1983 Bubka was 19 and participating in only his second meet outside the Soviet Union--the first Track and Field World Championships, at Helsinki.

The conditions were treacherous for pole vaulters; wind blowing from all directions. Attrition claimed the event’s biggest names and then those of the second tier, until it left only an unknown vaulter not worth bothering with.

Bubka had to clear 18-4 1/2 or be eliminated. He did. He then cleared 18-8 1/4 on his first attempt and screamed from the moment he hurtled over the bar until he landed, victorious.

Bubka had won the world championship, but, novice that he was, he didn’t know he was supposed to meet with the world’s media to tell them all about it. He simply left.

Thus, a champion and a mystique were born on the same day.

Rise up

and break your heavy chains,

and water with the tyrant’s blood

the freedom that you have gained.

--Unofficial Ukrainian national anthem.

When Soviet athletes were informed of the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles, they reacted in much the same way as Western athletes had during the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games. Some quit the sport. Some vowed to come back four years later and show them all.

Many redoubled their efforts and found in the boycott a new incentive. Bubka turned his bitterness inward. And skyward. He began to reel off world records, setting four in three months beginning May 16, 1984.

Larry Jessee, a U.S. vaulter and friend of Bubka’s, remembers the astonishment of the pole vault world as it watched Bubka’s assault on the standards of the times.

Wrote Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated: “Jessee remembers being at a meet in London on July 13 (1984), sitting next to Polish vaulter Tadeusz Slusarski, winner of the gold medal in the ’76 Olympics and the silver in the ’80. The bar was at 18-8 1/4. Bubka cleared it by a foot and a half. The bar was moved to 19-4 1/4. Bubka cleared it with eight inches to spare. Slusarski took the cigarette from Jessee’s mouth and inhaled it slowly. ‘It is over,’ he said quietly. ‘It is over.’ ”

Once Bubka established his dominance in the pole vault, he has shown a kind of arrogance about the world record.

Bubka has toyed with the world record, indoors and out, to the extent that he has set himself up for the worst in fan expectations. Bubka can jump the world record every night, can’t he?

“Sometimes when I jump very high, it is easy,” he said. “In other competitions, it is difficult.”

Difficult, but dramatic. Usually the drama turns on the question of how much higher Bubka will go than the others. Often he doesn’t begin vaulting until the rest of the field has dropped out.

There has also been drama of another kind. At last summer’s World Championships at Tokyo, Bubka was facing challenges from all sides.

The political situation in what was still the Soviet Union was breaking apart. Two days before he left for Tokyo, there was a coup attempt. Bubka had to leave his family and travel to the most important competition of the year under a cloud of uncertainty.

“When I arrived to the airport in Tokyo, I see on television the tanks in the streets,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen to my family.”

Uncertain, too, was Bubka’s physical condition. The heel and instep of his left foot, his plant foot, had been causing him great pain for a month. Bubka took a painkilling shot before the competition. He took another one during the competition--after breaking bones in his foot on his second vault.

The competition was rapidly getting away from him. He had vaulted only three times, reasoning that his foot could hold up for only so long. He was in sixth place. Bubka lined up for his second attempt at 19-6 1/4, having already missed once at that height and once at another.

Vaulters are allowed only three consecutive misses, no matter the height. If Bubka missed this vault, he was out of the competition.

The same situation had presented itself at the 1988 Olympics. Bubka was in fifth place going into his last jump. Under tremendous pressure, Bubka cleared the bar and won the gold medal.

The pressure was only slightly less at Tokyo. The result was the same. Bubka cleared the height. In the stands, his two small sons, Vitaly and Sergei, threw their arms up in an imitation of their father. Lillya, Bubka’s wife, had gotten the family out of the Soviet Union just hours before. It was the first time Bubka’s wife or sons had ever seen him compete in a World Championships or Olympics.

They were free. Bubka was free. He was champion.

To his competitors, it was another chance to win wrested away from them by the indomitable will of Bubka. How could they ever hope to overcome this thing they could not train for or defend against? Human spirit.

Said a glum Istvan Bagyula of Hungary, who was second to Bubka at Tokyo: “We can only dream of first place.”

They can have their dreams. Bubka has his own. Don’t stand in his way.