Setting a track-and-field world record is a great accomplishment. Imagine breaking a world record 35 times! The only person to ever do this is pole-vaulter Sergei Bubka of the Ukraine, a man experts call "the Czar of Vaulting." He set his first world record in 1984 and did not lose a pole-vaulting competition until 1990. In 1988 Bubka won a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, and in 1991 he became the first pole-vaulter to clear 20 feet. An amazing athlete, Bubka has dominated his sport like no one else in the history of sports.

Growing up

Bubka born

Sergei Bubka (SER-hee BOOB-ka) was born November 4, 1963, in Voroshilovgrad, a coal-mining city in what was then the Soviet Union (it is now in the Ukraine). His father, Nazar, was a sergeant in the Soviet army, and his mother, Valentina, worked in a hospital. Bubka's father was very strict and often treated...