Gyorffy Places Seventh in World High Jump Final

Harvard senior Dora Gyorffy qualified for the high jump finals at the IAAF World Championships in Edmonton last Friday and then finished seventh—just three clearances short of a medal—in Sunday’s final competition.

Gyorffy, the Hungarian national champion, was one of four athletes in the elite international field to clear the first two heights of 1.85 and 1.90 meters without error. Only one of the 12 finalists failed to advance past 1.90 within the allotted three attempts per height.

As the bar was raised to 1.94 meters, Gyorffy and four other finalists—including Amy Acuff, the lone American qualifier—were eliminated after three failed attempts.

South Africa’s Hestrie Cloete won her nation’s only gold medal of the championships after clearing heights of 1.85, 1.90, 1.94 and 1.97 meters on consecutive jumps and then two meters on her second try. Ukraine’s 34-year-old champion Inha Babakova matched Cloete’s performance at two meters but was left with silver because she needed two attempts at 1.97 meters. Sweden’s Kajsa Bergqvist, the 2001 IAAF indoor champion whose peak performance was 1.97 meters on the day, earned the bronze.

In Friday evening’s preliminaries, Gyorffy qualified for the final by the slimmest of margins. After failing in three attempts at 1.91 meters, Gyorffy’s qualification hopes rested on whether fewer than 12 athletes would clear at 1.91 and reach the final. Fortunately for her only 10 did, and since she had been flawless at 1.80, 1.85 and 1.88 meters, she earned one of the remaining two spots in the final. Yelena Yelesina, the high jump gold medalist in Sydney, also cleared at 1.88 meters, but she did not qualify for the final because she needed two attempts to clear at that height.

“In the high jump, the margins between the top athletes are so minimal that anything can happen,” Bergqvist said.

Gyorffy was actually ahead of the eventual winner Cloete on the season performance list going into the competition, as only she, Babakova, Bergqvist and fourth-place finisher Veneva Venelina of Bulgaria had cleared two meters in 2001. She had achieved the Hungarian record height of two meters at Hungarian Nationals two weeks before the World Championships.

Although Gyorffy’s chances of victory looked solid based on the performance list, she had yet to jump better than 1.95 meters in any meet where she had faced strong competition, and she jumped no better than 1.90 meters on average. The best jumps of her season—a 1.96-meter clearance at Princeton and the record-breaking height at Hungarian Nationals—all came against fields where the next-best competitor failed to clear even 1.80 meters.

Although Gyorffy faced little to no competition in the collegiate ranks and in her own nation this past season, she was able to prepare for worlds by competing in several IAAF meets in Europe throughout the summer. Her best place came at the Norwich Great Britain Grand Prix meet, the last IAAF Grand Prix meet before the championships, in which she finished fourth. The placings at that London meet—Cloete in first, Babakova in second and Bergqvist in third—perfectly matched the medals awarded in the World Championships.

Once Gyorffy closes out her final academic semester—which she must complete after leaving Harvard last fall to compete in the Sydney Olympics—she will have the freedom to build experience in the major international meets. When she placed fifth at the IAAF Indoor World Championships at Lisbon in March at a peak height of 1.93 meters, she placed some of the blame on her failure to adapt to an unexpected ramp that interfered with her approach. At Edmonton, the IAAF reported that a strong headwind, which picked up as the bar was raised to 1.94 meters, made the competition difficult for inexperienced jumpers.

During her collegiate eligibility, Gyorffy won the 2000 NCAA indoor high jump title and the 2001 NCAA outdoor high jump title, as well as eight Heptagonal high jump titles and seven Heptagonal triple jump titles. She was the second Harvard athlete to place respectably at the World Championships within the past two weeks. Harvard track co-captain Brenda Taylor ’01 placed sixth in her semifinal heat in the 400-meter hurdles on Aug. 6.