When footage of drunken high-jumper Ivan Ukhov appeared on YouTube last year, it generated more than a million hits in a week. Though it�s doubtful if international athletics broadcasters will consider it an option at a Berlin seminar next week.

When footage of drunken high-jumper Ivan Ukhov appeared on YouTube last year, it generated more than a million hits in a week. Though it's doubtful if international athletics broadcasters will consider it an option at a Berlin seminar next week.

The world laughed at the Russian's antics at the Athletissima grand prix in Lausanne last summer. He got his feet fankled in his tracksuit bottoms and swatted at an official who attempted to intervene before finally diving under the bar at the opening height.

Clearly, he had visited the bar a few times earlier, but few are laughing at him now. Ukhov won the European indoor title this spring, and has since cleared 2.40 metres in Piraeus, a Russian record which tops the world indoor rankings. Remarkably, he did so wearing long jump spikes, without heel support.

Only four athletes have gone higher indoors or out, and none since 1994, when Cuban world record-holder Javier Sotomayor reached 2.41m. His world best, 2.45m, had been set the previous year. That's eight feet and half an inch - some 16 inches above the height of a standard household door.

The 23-year-old Ukhov has risen above the anger he generated last year to dominate his event. He is in a three-way tie for World No.1 outdoors this summer with 2.35m, and is favourite for gold when the World Championships open in Berlin a week tomorrow. The 2005 European junior champion is most likely of the current crop to take forward an event that has been static for a decade-and-a-half.

Eleven athletes have cleared 2.33m (indoors and out) a total of 23 times in the past year. Ukhov has 11 of these. He has five of the best nine heights recorded outdoors this summer and five of the best seven indoors. The next best is Jesse Williams with four jumps of 2.33m or better, but he failed to make it on to the US team. So the Russian's biggest rival in Berlin is likely to be his compatriot, Yaroslav Rybakov, the World Indoor champion and Olympic bronze medallist.

Beijing Olympic champion Andrey Silnov (also Russian) and runner-up Germaine Mason (UK) are absent from Berlin. Former Olympic champion Stefan Holm has retired, so Ukhov is strong favourite.

It was his failure to gain selection for the Russian Olympic team (he was only sixth in their trials, with 2.30m) for Beijing, and a spat with his girlfriend which provoked a spectacular binge in his Lausanne hotel last year as he hit the vodka and Red Bull.

He was disqualified from the competition, and there were threats of suspension. Valentin Maslakov, the team's head coach, was incandescent, and demanded a 12-month ban. "He has disgraced all Russian track and field athletes," he said. The All Russian Athletics Federation supported this, but the world body, the Inter- national Association of Athletics Federations was surprisingly lenient, issuing a warning about his future conduct. Alcohol is not regarded as performance-enhancing.

"Obviously, Ivan regretted very much what happened and we immediately reimbursed the organisers for all their expenses," said the Russian's manager, Pavel Voronkov of the Lausanne fiasco. "He is still a young man and he has learned a good lesson."

He said a one-year ban would have destroyed Ukhov as an athlete.

When Ukhov won the European title in Birmingham this year, he was a man on a mission. "I did everything to become the winner and to show I'm a good athlete, and improve my name after Lausanne last year. It's true 2.32m is not that high for me, but it was already high enough for the others."

Born in Chelyabinsk, famous for its role in establishing the Trans-Siberian Railway and building tanks, Ukhov was a discus thrower until 2004. The following year, he was European junior high-jump champion, having improved 20cm, to 2.30m. Now he is jumping 48cm (almost 20 inches) above his own height.

The withdrawal of Mason from the British team caps a traumatic year. The Jamaican, who transferred allegiance to Britain in 2006, vainly appealed for clemency for his brother, Andre, a former sprinter who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang killing of a student.