Bubka Repeats 1983 Victory, Then Apologizes : Soviet Champion Vaulter Again Clears Only 18-8 in World Games at Helsinki

As a 19-year-old pole vaulter competing in his first international competition and largely unknown outside of his native Ukraine, the Soviet Union’s Sergei Bubka jumped 18 feet 8 inches in Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium, winning the gold medal in the 1983 World Championships.

Five years later, Bubka, now one of the world’s most famous athletes--he has broken the world record outdoors eight times since 1984--returned to Olympic Stadium Thursday night and again jumped 18-8, earning first place in the Mobil Grand Prix World Games.

This time, he apologized.

“I jumped five years ago 5.70 (meters),” he said through an interpreter. “Now I can jump 6.05 (his most recent world record of 19-10), and I still jump 5.70. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

Bubka’s only excuse concerned the gusting winds that are customary in the stadium as he cleared one of two attempts at 18-8 and then missed three times at 19-4.

Reminded that he did not complain of the wind in 1983, Bubka shrugged and said, “I was a young man five years ago.”

In other words, he did not know enough to let such things bother him as a teen-ager.

Now the young pole vaulter who has become the talk of the track and field world is Poland’s Miroslav Chmara, who jumped 19-4 last week in Lille, France. His best performance before this year was 18-6 1/2.

Bubka discounted Chmara’s jump in Lille.

“The conditions were so good that I would have jumped 6.20 (20-4),” he said.

The organizers here announced that Chmara would compete in the World Games and still had him on the start list until the meet began, when it became apparent that he would be a no-show.

Bubka, so brash that European journalists claim he has “the mind of an American,” said he would have won regardless.

“It doesn’t matter what Chmara jumps,” he said. “I’ll go above.”

Bubka also predicted that he will win at the Summer Olympics in Seoul with a jump between 19-4 and 19-8.

When someone suggested that Bubka was not thinking high enough, he appeared startled.

“You think 5.90 (19-4) is not so high?” he said. “Only four people in the world have done better than 5.90, and one of them (Billy Olson) has done it only one time. One does it all the time.”

No one had to ask to whom he referred.

Tatiana Samolenko, the Soviet middle-distance runner who duplicated Mary Decker Slaney’s feat of 1983 by winning the 1,500 meters and the 3,000 meters at the 1987 World Championships in Rome, won the 3,000 Thursday night in 8 minutes 43.48 seconds, second-best time in the world this year.

Afterward, she said she definitely will run the 1,500 in Seoul but has not decided about the 3,000. “I don’t like to run the 3,000,” she said. “It just doesn’t appeal to me.” She said she may try the 800.

Brian Cooper, whose 10.07 at the national meet two weeks ago is the fourth-fastest time by an American this year in the 100 meters, pulled up with a hamstring injury in the 100 here. He described it as a small tear.

Asked if it might prevent him from competing in the U.S. Olympic trials, beginning July 15 in Indianapolis, Cooper said: “Hell no. If I stretch and get it treated, Brian’ll be coming back. A little tear is not going to stop me.”

Dannette Young of Jacksonville, Fla., was the only U.S. winner here, running the 200 meters in 22.68. Her best time in 1988 is 22.21, making her the fourth-fastest performer in the world this year and second-fastest in the United States behind Florence Griffith Joyner. Young said she believes she will run faster Saturday night in Oslo, Norway.

Steve Scott finished last in the 800, but he said he was looking ahead to one of the traditional highlights of the track and field season, the Dream Mile, in Oslo. He will run against Somalia’s Abdi Bile, the 1987 world champion in the 1,500, and world record-holder Steve Cram of Great Britain.