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After winning the high jump gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games, Javier
Sotomayor embarked on what was arguably the best year of his long and
illustrious career. His first major competition in 1993 was the World
Indoor Championships at Toronto. In the high jump final on 14 March,
both Sotomayor and Patrik Sjoberg missed their first attempts at 2.39m.
After Sjoberg was successful at his second attempt, Sotomayor decided
to gamble his last two attempts at the next height of 2.41m, clearing
the bar on his last attempt to win the gold medal. Besides that
performance, Javier cleared 2.40m or higher on four occasions in the
outdoor season, and was the only jumper able to clear that height during
1993.
The first of these was a 2.40m jump at Havana on 22 May,
followed by another 2.40m clearance for a win in London on 23 July.
Only four days later at Salamanca, Sotomayor proceeded to place his
world record even further from the reach of his struggling rivals, when
he cleared a new mark of 2.45m on his second attempt. The first man ever to clear 8 feet. The following
month, he participated in his third World Championships at Stuttgart.
The high jump final at Stuttgart, held on 22 August, produced some high
quality jumping, with no less than seven men attempting 2.37m, three of
whom, Sotomayor, Artur Partyka (Poland), and Steve Smith (Great Britain)
clearing the bar on their first attempts. However, only Sotomayor (see photo above)
could jump higher that day, and he clinched the gold medal when he
cleared 2.40m on his second attempt. Javier then had two unsuccessful
tries at a new world record of 2.46m before calling it a day. He
finished off his remarkable year by retaining his title at the Central
American and Caribbean Games in Ponce on 24 November. (Ron Casey)
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