page_title: Blanka Vlašić
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Blanka Vlašić / Biography / Early life
caption_attribution_description: World Athletics Championships 2007 in Osaka - Blanka Vlasic from Croatia after winning the women's high jump
context_page_description: Blanka Vlašić is a Croatian track and field athlete who specialises in the high jump. She is a two-time world champion and double Olympic medallist who ranks as the joint second highest female jumper of all time with her personal best of 2.08 m. She is the Croatian record holder in the event, and the former indoor world champion.
  The daughter of Croatian decathlon record holder Joško Vlašić, she was a talented junior athlete and attended her first Olympic Games in 2000 Sydney at the age of sixteen. She won the World Junior Championships in Athletics in both 2000 and 2002. Vlašić broke the Croatia national record in 2004 and also won her first world senior medal at the World Indoor Championships that year. A hyperthyroid condition hindered her second Olympic appearance in Athens and she spent the 2005 season recuperating from surgery.
  She returned in 2006, taking the silver at the World Indoor Championships. The 2007 season signalled a strong run of form: she won at the 2007 World Championships, became the indoor world champion in 2008 and her winning streak came to an end with a narrow loss at the Beijing Olympics, where she took silver.
context_section_description: Blanka Vlašić was born on 8 November 1983 in Split, Croatia (which was then part of Yugoslavia). From a young age, she was involved in sports: her mother Venera was a seasoned amateur in basketball and cross country skiing while her father, Joško Vlašić, was an international athlete who broke the Croatian record in the decathlon. Her father brought her to the track while he practised and she dreamed of becoming a professional sprinter. As she grew up she tried a number of sports but found that the high jump was particularly well-suited to her tall and slender frame. Vlašić shunned the idea of competing in more profitable sports, such as basketball, saying that she preferred the thrill of individual sports. She reached the international standard for a high jumper at an early age, setting a personal best of 1.80 metres at fifteen years of age and quickly improving to 1.93 m at sixteen.
caption: Vlašić quickly became Croatia's top female high jump athlete.
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