Australian pole vaulter Steve Hooker in action at the National Championships in Sydney in February.
Australian Pole Vault record-holder, Paul Burgess, is to remain in Perth while countrymen Steve Hooker and Dmitri Markov look to make their mark at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Athletics Tour meet at Olympic Park in Melbourne.
The meet will provide many Commonwealth athletes with a timely warm-up to the Games.
Preparations for the Pole Vault event were hampered when a scheduled meet in Brisbane was cancelled due to bad weather. The 9 March replacement event was a last-minute inclusion to a revamped IAAF World Athletics Tour in Melbourne.
Hooker said he was confident Australia would claim a podium clean-sweep in the Pole Vault, declaring the team to be in good medal form.
“Someone from another country's really going to have to step up to take one of them off us but having said that, it's a funny event and things out of your control could change things."
Hooker is in career-best form having cleared a personal best of 5.91m at an inter-club meet earlier in the month, making it a Victorian record by 4cm.
“My 5.91 jump was good and I feel if maybe the bar had been at 6m when I jumped that it would have been a clearance,” said Hooker.
“I didn't have that many good clean jumps at 6m on Saturday when I attempted it. But I do feel like it's a possibility and I'm in that kind of shape. It's just a matter of putting it together on the day.”
In the women’s Pole Vault, Commonwealth record holder Kym Howe returns to competition for the first time since wiping former world record holder Emma George's name from the Australian record book, with a 4.61m clearance at in Canberra in early February.
Howe will leap against Sydney Olympic Games silver medallist Tatiana Grigorieva and Tatiana’s niece Vicky Parnov.
Manchester bronze medallist Stephanie McCann of Canada is also in the line-up.
Athletics competition begins at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Sunday 19 March, and continues until 25 March.
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