Vlasic aims high at every athletics meeting

By Mark Ledsom

ZURICH (Reuters) - Never mind the Olympics, Blanka Vlasic wants to put on a world-beating performance every time she approaches the high jump bar.

The Croatian world champion, who had the year's best jump of 2.03 meters last Friday, has one of athletics' oldest world records in her sights at every meeting she competes in.

While many athletes have spent months fine-tuning their training and competition schedules to hit peak condition at the Beijing Games in August, Vlasic and her father-coach Josko, a former decathlete, prefer to maintain the same top level of performance throughout the entire season.

"We always want to jump at a lot of meetings and jump high at each one of them," Vlasic told Reuters in Zurich ahead of her first outdoor meeting of the season in Doha.

"I think it's important to be all the time on the circuit to maintain a certain level of results unless there are some special reasons to ease up.

"It's been a winning formula for us so far so I don't see any reason to change it just because it's an Olympic year."

Barely known outside her homeland before last year, the 1.93-metre tall Vlasic put in some suitably lofty performances in 2007, winning 18 of the 19 outdoor events she competed in.

WORLD RECORD