It is the moment she has been counting down towards, and now finally Blanka Vlasic will compete outdoors for the first time this season at the IAAF Diamond League in Oslo on Wednesday night.
And what a field she is facing. The event is among the best at the 49th Bislett Games as she meets Russians Anna Chicherova, the Olympic champion, and Mariya Kuchina who shared world indoor gold in Sopot in March with Poland’s Kamila Licwinko who is also part of this top line-up.
Kuchina and Licwinko both cleared 2.00m to share first place on the podium in March but it is Chicherova who has jumped the furthest outdoors this year when she won with 2.01m at the Diamond League in Eugene on 31 May.
She is the joint leader in the event’s Diamond Race with four points with Ana Simic who won at the second meeting of the series with 1.97m in Shanghai and then extended that to a 2014-best of 1.98m in Beijing.
Not since Simic’s Croatian teammate Vlasic cleared 2.00m in Oslo in 2010 has that height been achieved at the Bislett Games but the mark could be threatened again on Wednesday night such is the level of the competition.
Vlasic missed the majority of the 2012 and 2013 seasons with injury but she showed she has not lost any of the class that made her the world champion in 2007 and 2009 and European champion in 2010 when she returned for this year’s indoor season and cleared 2.00m in Prague.
Now for the outdoor challenge and as she told the event organisers: 'I feel more confident now than in a long time and look forward to picking up again and give the other girls some serious competition.'
Vlasic’s outdoor personal best was her stunning 2.08m national record in 2009 - just one centimetre away from equaling Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova’s 1987 world record – and she is ready to put into action all her months of preparation.
Speaking in the countdown to the Bislett Games, she said on her website www.blanka-vlasic.hr: 'I am very happy to be starting in Oslo, at what will probably be the strongest high jump competition in recent years.
'During these ten weeks of training, I have fully regained and stabilised my jumping technique. What we have been doing during training can be said to have been quite bold. I am feeling great in every respect.'