Athletics: Outstanding jump confirms potential the experts saw

WELLINGTON - Glenn Howard is still coming down to earth after defying gravity like no New Zealander before him.

The ebullient 23-year-old launched himself into rare air and the record books on Sunday when he cleared 2.30m to win the high jump title at the national track and field championships in Christchurch.

That performance would have been good enough to place him among the top 12 at the last two world championships. As it is, his world ranking is set to improve to the low 30s and he advanced the New Zealand record by 5cm on the previous mark he himself set three years ago.

More significant than substantially raising the bar, he became just the fifth New Zealand track and field athlete to attain the Olympic Games qualifying standard for this year's showpiece in Sydney.

Hardly a household name, Howard joined a list of New Zealand's best, who include Beatrice Faumuina, Chris Donaldson, Toni Hodgkinson and Craig Barrett.

It was a timely statement from the lean, 80kg, 1.94m Howard, whose development has been stunted in recent years by adversity.

A debilitating back injury requiring major surgery stopped him in his tracks and it required a major commitment on his part to overcome a setback that would have terminated the careers of lesser men.

Long identified within athletics circles as possessing uncommon ability in a highly technical and demanding discipline, Howard set national age-group marks throughout the grades before his sporting career was put on hold in 1998 when two stress fractures on one vertebrae left him on the inactive list for six months before undergoing surgery.

Two 5cm titanium screws were fused to his spine, leaving his lower spine less flexible but more solid and stronger than it had been.

"The doctors said it wouldn't be as good as what God gave me but that it would do the job," Howard recalled.

"It takes a special person to come back from what he has experienced," said Dave Norris, a national athletics selector, who has closely followed Howard's rehabilitation on Auckland's North Shore where he is coached by Jovica Petrovic, a former Croatian long jumper and one of 10 coaches based at the North Sport Academy.

His outstanding achievement in Christchurch does not guarantee Howard an Olympic Games berth but it has placed his name at the forefront of the selectors' minds.

- NZPA