After severe disappointment at the Commonwealth Games, Okkert Brits has soared back to his best and is aiming even higher next year
ATHLETICS: Paul Martin
FROM shattering humiliation to glorious victory in the space of a fornight: it’s a Boys Own success story for the pole-vaulting African record-holder and now World Cup gold medallist Okkert Brits.
Hardly surprising then that the bean-pole-shaped Free Stater is revelling in his golden opportunity to have the last laugh over his recent critics in the South African media.
“I suppose they’ll now be saying I’m high on drugs!” Brits chortled as we sat watching his African team clean up the men’s World Cup team competition at Crystal Palace last Sunday.
“After I failed to clear my opening height at the Commonwealth Games, the South African press nailed me,” he recalled. Forgotten was the fact that he had already been hoisting the African record from its lowly 5.33m in leaps and bounds to 5.80m this year. “I was home for a week after that and they showed my Commonwealth failure five times on TV. One English-language newspaper said I had become `The world’s biggest disappointment’.”
How, then, did he prove them wrong? “I took it as simple as possible. I got the people who regarded me so negatively out of my head. If I worry about what they said about me, then I’m finished. My coach says I musn’t read it, but I like reading what they say about me. For me it’s like a live game, it’s exciting … you see how negative they can be, then you’re determined to prove them wrong. And when you do everyone is mad about you again.
“This sort of writing makes me angry but it helps me. My brother and I laugh a lot about it. It’s nice that I’m in that kind of career where they write about you. If I was a doctor they would ignore me.”
Brits does confess that his failure at Victoria, coupled with the media pressure, was having an impact. “It was a big blow to me; I felt especially bad that I had also let my whole country down. And it obviously works on a guy. Back in Stellenbosch I was belligerent (stryd-vol). I fought with my girlfriend. I just wanted to get away.”
The brief confessional is quickly over, though, and the bravado is back.
“Now I’ve learned again. I can see that after such a big disappointment, I can come back and exceed my previous best. Psychologically, it has done me a power of good.”
Indeed, confidence is bursting forth from a man whose discipline, pole-vaulting, relies every bit as much on the mind as the body. “Yes, I think mental strength is the real key to it,” opined Brits. “A number of athletes have vaulted to 5.90m but they somehow got stuck there, unable to break the six metre barrier.”
His plan for next year is not to jump six metres. That’s right, not six metres, only more. “I will never put the bar at six metres. I know I can do 6.05m. For next year 6.10m is a good possibility. Then there’s just five centimetres more to a world record.”
The nerves were jangling at Crystal Palace, Brits confessed, but there he took a “big risk” that paid dividends. When his French rival failed at 5.75m, Brits put the bar up by a full 15cm, and cleared on the first attempt.
His pole then knocked off the bar, but only because officials had failed to catch it in time. “I thought: this is mad. But no problem, I’ll just clear it easily with my next attempt.” The judges ruled in his favour, but his self-confidence speaks volumes.
So too does his attitude to medal-winning. Brits could have won the Commonwealth gold with a mediocre 5.50m, but in his own scale of excellence that would, he says, have been a “soft” gold medal — unlike the one he proudly brings back from the World Cup at 5.90m.
Determination has always been a Brits characteristic, ever since he first took up the sport, ultra-furtively, at the age of 12. Brits had been good at high-jumping, despite being short for his age, but pole-vaulting was forbidden: his father Andre had dallied with it in his youth and was convinced it was very dangerous, especially with the stiff poles and bars used in those days.
“During the Christmas holdays, when my mum and dad were at work, I took anything out of the house that was soft, including the carpets. Then I laid them in a hole. I made a jumping device out of two sticks of bamboo in the back yard, and I suspended a third one on a string as the cross bar. It was a perfect thing.”
He would launch himself skywards with a two-metre steel electrical pipe — “it seemed terribly long to me,” he recalled. At four o’clock he would pack it all up neatly, replacing the carpets. “My mum Magda would come home at five and she’d see a whole houseful of grass. I’d say: No Mum I’ve been playing rugby. Sorry Mum.”
Beginning at a height of 1.5m, he progressed in the space of two weeks through the holiday to the two-metre mark, the same height as his makeshift pole. Then came possibly a high-pressure jump to match his World Cup effort.
“At that stage I said I’m so happy, Dad can hit me, I don’t care. I just left the carpets and things there. I said: Dad come look. Heck, he was so angry at first. I knew he would hammer me. As he came over to me he saw me jump over two metres, and he said: `Mmm, baie nice!’. But Mum was extremely angry about the carpets.”
By the end of the summer season at Grey College, Bloemfontein, the young Brits had reached 2.21m. And he’s been going ever upwards since then.
Leaving home after matric, he moved to Stellenbosch for its coaching and facilities, not its academia. “Why must I get tense about not going to university?” he argues. “If I get injured I can swat then. I plan to get my degree after the Olympics. Probably in the medical field.”
His geography has already been improved by his travels, and his English, which he says he could hardly speak a word of a year back, has taken off thanks to two American training partners.
Brits grew prodigiously in Standard Nine to reach his present 1.98m — not, he insists, an advantage for a pole- vaulter. The shorter, more compact vaulters (Sergey Bubka is 1.85m tall) have an advantage in speed and power, he thinks.
Brits is also looking back to his early childhood vaulting to gain the key to further progress. “Many guys get so technical about sport. We try to keep it as simple as possible. I try to think back to things I learned aged 12. They are so logical.”
One thing he’s identified for improvement is that “I see pictures of my feet hanging in the air. I have forgotten how to lift my foot after take-off. It’s something I did naturally at 12.”
His imagination had been fired by the triumphs of Bubka, the athletics world’s record world record-holder, who is still scaling the dizzy heights, despite his unparalleled achievements. Brits’ greatest moment this season was actually to beat the Ukranian in one of their three encounters.
“Bubka is very much a man for himself. He does things on his own, and in his own way. We’ve talked a few technical things after the vaulting was over — but the time I beat him he didn’t talk to me,” Brits chuckled.
The Ukranian maestro, now luxuriously based in Berlin, has the good grace to declare that he expects Brits to overtake his current world record, 6.14m, one day.
These remarks have thrilled the South African. “It gives me a boost. It makes it easier for me to say to you that the chances of me breaking the world record are big.”
That’s confidence which in some people might be close to arrogance, but Brits has a certain charm and honesty that is refreshing.
He is to cut down his South African appearances from last season’s 15 to a more manageable seven. It is mainly to allow him greater European competition, but also to give him the crucial rest periods and training time.
“I was on a massive high in Europe, then went back home and lost momentum. I need time to relax and get my mind right. It’s ridiculous to have 33 events a year. I don’t know how I did it.”
There is also a definite money side to it. “South African athletics chiefs feel threatened to give so many thousands of rands to an athlete. They are used to athletes doing it for love and charity. Athletes got R300 if they won.”
Here comes the twist of the knife. “People there must realise that (speaking for myself) I will not be doing things for love and charity any more. It’s my living. That’s not how it works around the world and I don’t know why it should work like that in South Africa, as they want.”
Yet Brits is anxious not to be seen as spurning the hand that nurtured him. “I am always there for South Africa, and I will never withdraw from a meet because they don’t want to pay. I will always do my share for South Africa, so that my people will talk only well of me: that’s most important for me.”
The man is too much of an individualist to wear patriotism on his sleeve. But the new realities in South Africa, and its newfound worldwide welcome, have had an impact.
“I want so badly to do things for my country. I did not feel like that last year. What the hell, I thought last year, what has my country done for me? It’s now just so nice to know you represent your country, or even your continent, on the world stage.”