World Athletics Championships 1991 / men's high jump

3rd World Athletics Championships
discipline	high jump
gender	Men
Attendees	39 athletes from 27 countries
venue	Tokyo
Competition location	Olympic Stadium
Competition phase	August 30th (qualification) September 1st (final)
Medalist Charles Austin ( USA )   Javier Sotomayor ( CUB )   Hollis Conway ( USA )

The Olympic Stadium in Tokyo in 2008

The men's high jump at the 1991 World Athletics Championships was held on August 30 and September 1, 1991 in the Olympic Stadium in the Japanese capital, Tokyo .

The US high jumpers won two gold and bronze medals in this competition. Charles Austin became world champion . He won ahead of the Cuban world record holder Javier Sotomayor . The 1988 Olympic runner-up, Hollis Conway , came third.

Records

Existing records

World record	2.44 m	Javier Sotomayor	San Juan , Puerto Rico	July 29, 1989
World championship record	2.38 m	Patrik Sjöberg	World Cup 1987 in Rome , Italy	September 6, 1987
		Hennadij Avdjejenko
		Igor Paklin

Record setting / improvement

• World Championship record: 2.38 m - Charles Austin . USA (World Champion), final on September 1st (record equalized)
• National record : 2.36 m - Dalton Grant , Great Britain (fourth), final on September 1 (new British record)

qualification

August 30, 1991, 4:40 p.m.

39 participants competed in two groups for the qualifying round. The qualification height for the direct entry into the final was 2.30 m. Nobody had to approach this height. After fourteen athletes had crossed 2.27 m (highlighted in light green), the qualification was canceled because the effort would have been excessive to continue with fourteen high jumpers just to eliminate two more of them.

Group A

space	Surname	nation	Result (noun)
1	Charles Austin	United States	2.27
	Dalton Grant	Great Britain	2.27
	Marino Drake	Cuba	2.27
4th	Arturo Ortiz	Spain	2.27
5	Dragutin Topić	Yugoslavia	2.27
	Troy Kemp	Bahamas	2.27
	Rick Noji	United States	2.27
8th	Rudolf Powarnitsyn	Soviet Union	2.27
9	Ian Garrett	Australia	2.24
10	Takahisa Yoshida	Japan	2.24
11	Róbert Ruffini	Czechoslovakia	2.24
12	Georgi Dakov	Bulgaria	2.24
13	Håkon Särnblom	Norway	2.20
	Fouad Fahriedin	Jordan	2.20
15th	Zhou Zhonge	People's Republic of China	2.20
16	Steve Smith	Great Britain	2.20
17th	Michael Mikkelsen	Denmark	2.20
18th	Jarosaw Kotewicz	Poland	2.15
19th	Roger Te Puni	New Zealand	2.15
NM	Fernando Moreno	Argentina	ogV

Group B

Sorin Matei his 2.24 m was not enough to take part in the final

space	Surname	nation	Result (noun)
1	Hollis Conway	United States	2.27
	Artur Partyka	Poland	2.27
	Javier Sotomayor	Cuba	2.27
	Igor Paklin	Soviet Union	2.27
5	Patrik Sjöberg	Sweden	2.27
6th	Steinar Hoen	Norway	2.27
7th	Juha Isolehto	Finland	2.24
8th	Gustavo Becker	Spain	2.24
	Othmane Belfaa	Algeria	2.24
	Sorin Matei	Romania	2.24
11	Tim Forsyth	Australia	2.24
12	Alex Zaliauskas	Canada	2.24
13	Serhiy Dimchenko	Soviet Union	2.20
14th	Xu Yang	People's Republic of China	2.20
15th	David Anderson	Australia	2.15
16	Karl Scatliffe	British Virgin Islands	2.05
17th	Valery Abugattas	Peru	2.00
18th	Khalid Ahmed Mousa	Sudan	1.90
	Emmanuel Ngadjadoum	Chad	1.90
DNS	Geoff Parsons	Great Britain

Course of competition

When the competition entered the crucial phase, Javier Sotomayor (first attempt), Hollis Conway (second attempt) and Dalton Grant (third attempt) jumped 2.36 m, a height that Charles Austin missed. Austin then mastered 2.38 m with his second jump, while Conway and Grant failed three times and were eliminated. Sotomayor skipped this height and only re-entered at 2.40 m. But he could only make one unsuccessful attempt and then had to give up because of an ankle injury. Conway, who skipped 2.40 m and tried three times in vain to reach the world record height of 2.45 m, had won the competition. Due to the failure rule, Sotomayor were runner-up and Conway bronze medalists, while Grant remained the ungrateful fourth place.

Dalton Grant had entered the competition with a personal best of 2.30 m only at 2.31 m and in the end had set a new British national record with 2.36 m.

Legend

Brief overview of the meaning of the symbols - also commonly used in other publications:

-	waived
O	skipped
x	invalid
r	Competition not continued (retired)

final

September 1, 1991, 3 p.m.

space

Surname

nation

Result (noun)

2.20 m

2.24 m

2.28 m

2.31 m

2.34 m

2.36 m

2.38 m

2.40 m

2.45 m

1

Charles Austin

United States

2.38 CRe

O

O

-

O

O

-

xo

-

xxx

2

Javier Sotomayor

Cuba

2.36

-

O

-

O

-

O

-

xr

3

Hollis Conway

United States

2.36

O

O

-

xo

-

xo

xxx

4th

Dalton Grant

Great Britain

2.36 NO

-

-

-

O

-

xxo

xxx

5

Troy Kemp

Bahamas

2.34

O

-

O

xo

O

xxx

Marino Drake

Cuba

2.34

O

-

xo

-

O

xxx

7th

Patrik Sjöberg

Sweden

2.31

-

O

-

xxo

xr

8th

Rick Noji

United States

2.28

O

-

xo

xxx

9

Dragutin Topić

Yugoslavia

2.28

Expiration not listed in the sources

10

Arturo Ortiz

Spain

2.24

Igor Paklin

Soviet Union

2.24

12

Artur Partyka

Poland

2.24

13

Rudolf Powarnitsyn

Soviet Union

2.24

14th

Steinar Hoen

Norway

2.20

• 

  World record holder Javier Sotomayor (here in 2015) became vice world champion - due to an injury, he was unable to fight for victory in the end

• 

  Defending champion Patrik Sjöberg (photo: 2011) , Olympic second in 1984 and Olympic third in 1988 , finished seventh

• 

  The reigning European champion Dragutin Topić came in ninth place

• 

  Artur Partyka reached number twelve

• 

  Fourteenth place for Steinar Hoen

Video

• Men's High Jump Final World Champs in Tokyo 1991 on youtube.com, accessed April 15, 2020

Web links

• World Championships in Athletics, 3rd IAAF World Championships in Athletics , accessed April 24, 2020
• Men High Jump Athletics III World Championship 1991 Tokyo (JPN) 1991 at todor66.com, accessed April 24, 2020
• Results in the IAAF Statistics Handbook for the 2019 World Cup in Doha, Men High Jump, Tokyo 1991, p. 159 (PDF 10.3 MB, English), accessed on April 24, 2020

References and comments

1. ↑ IAAF world records. High jump men on rekorde-im-sport.de, accessed on April 24, 2020