Blanka Vlašić

Blanka Vlašić (born 8 November 1983) is a Croatian former track and field athlete who specialized in the high jump.

She is a two-time world champion and double Olympic medallist who ranks as the joint second highest female jumper of all time with her personal best of.

She is the Croatian record holder in the event, and the former indoor world champion.

Blanka Vlašić was born on 8 November 1983 in Split, SR Croatia (at the time part of Yugoslavia).

From a young age, she was involved in sports: her mother Venera was a seasoned amateur in basketball and cross-country skiing while her father, Joško Vlašić, was an international athlete who broke the Croatian record in the decathlon.

Her father brought her to the track while he practised and she dreamed of becoming a professional sprinter.

As she grew up she tried a number of sports but found that the high jump was particularly well-suited to her tall and slender frame.

Vlašić shunned the idea of competing in more profitable sports, such as basketball, saying that she preferred the thrill of individual sports.

She reached the international standard for a high jumper at an early age, setting a personal best of 1.80 metres at fifteen years of age and quickly improving to 1.93 m at sixteen.

The daughter of Croatian decathlon record holder Joško Vlašić, she was a talented junior athlete and attended her first Olympic Games in 2000 Sydney at the age of sixteen.

She won the World Junior Championships in Athletics in both 2000 and 2002.

Vlašić had an early start in international competition: she competed at the inaugural World Youth Championships, finishing eighth, and represented her country for the first time at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Although the Olympics showed that she was not ready to compete at the senior level, she proved herself to be more than proficient at the junior level by winning the 2000 World Junior Championships with a jump of 1.91 m. She was a regular competitor at senior athletics meetings and was steadily improving, qualifying for further top-level senior events.

Vlašić finished sixth at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton with a mark of 1.94 m, a result which led the IAAF's Ed Gordon to mark her out as a future star in the event.

She rounded off the year by winning her first senior gold medal at an international tournament, taking first place at the 2001 Mediterranean Games.

The results of Vlašić's final year as a junior showed further development as a high jumper.

She set a new indoor best of 1.92 m at the 2002 European Indoor Championships and was the favourite to win the 2002 World Juniors.

She won the competition by a margin of nine centimetres, setting a new personal best of 1.96 m and attempting the symbolic two metres height.

She failed to pass the bar but remained pleased with her achievements: "This was the first time I tried the 2-metre mark. That would have been a bonus. Today what matters is the gold. I am very happy I retained my world junior title".

At the final major event of the season, the European Championships, she could not repeat her previous form and finished in fifth place.

Nevertheless, at the end of the year she was ranked in the top ten high jumpers in the world for the season.

The start to the 2003 athletics season was promising – Vlašić set a new personal best in Linz with a jump of 1.98 m and finished fourth at the World Indoor Championships ten days later, her highest finish in a major world tournament.

June and July yielded further progress, jumping 1.98 m again and improving to 1.99 m to win her first IAAF Golden League event at the Gaz de France.

Days later, she jumped the two metres height for the first time on home soil at the IAAF Grand Prix Zagreb.

Although Hestrie Cloete won the competition overall, Vlašić's defeat of the psychological barrier and improved personal best was the highlight of the meeting and Cloete praised the young athlete's performance.

Vlašić took gold at the 2003 European Athletics Under-23 Championships, and then she improved her best by another centimetre at the Zürich Grand Prix which qualified her for the World Championships and the first IAAF World Athletics Final.

Despite such previous highs, her season ended on a low note as she failed to win a medal at either the World Championships (finishing seventh with 1.95 m) or the Athletics Final in Paris (ending up fourth with 1.96 m).

Although she had failed to reach the podium at the major championships, only three athletes managed to jump higher than her personal and season's best of 2.01 m in 2003.

Vlašić broke the Croatia national record in 2004 and also won her first world senior medal at the World Indoor Championships that year.

Vlasic started the season well with a bronze medal performance at the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships in March.

She regularly reached the podium at meetings in the outdoor season and won the 2004 national championships.

A Croatian record breaking jump of 2.03 m in Ljubljana put her in good stead for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

However, when she competed at the Olympic high jump final she only managed eleventh place with a jump of 1.89 m. Following this, Vlašić did not compete for almost a year: she admitted that she was feeling lethargic and shortly afterwards she was diagnosed with a hyperthyroid condition.

A hyperthyroid condition hindered her second Olympic appearance in Athens and she spent the 2005 season recuperating from surgery.

Surgery and recovery ruled out the vast majority of the 2005 athletics season and she only managed to make two competitive appearances.

A best of 1.95 m guaranteed her victory at the national championships, but her jump of 1.88 m was not enough to progress into the finals of the 2005 World Championships.

She returned in 2006, taking the silver at the World Indoor Championships.

The 2007 season signalled a strong run of form: she won at the 2007 World Championships, became the indoor world champion in 2008 and her winning streak came to an end with a narrow loss at the Beijing Olympics that year, where she took silver.

She became World Champion for the second time in 2009.

Her awards also including the IAAF World Athlete of the Year 2010 and the European Athlete of the Year trophy (2007, 2010).