KIEV, June 23: Former world pole vault champion and multiple record holder Sergei Bubka, virtually a national institution in Ukraine, easily won election as president of the country’s National Olympic Committee (NOC) on Thursday.

Bubka, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board, won 80 votes to 30 for his nearest rival. He took over from ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the loser in last year’s hotly contested Ukrainian presidential election. The highly popular Bubka holds the ex-Soviet state’s highest honour, Hero of Ukraine, and is almost certainly one of the best known Ukrainians outside his country.

An Olympic gold medallist at Seoul in 1988, he has 35 world records to his credit, including two still standing — 6.14 metres outdoor set in 1994 in Sestrieres, Italy and 6.15 indoor in his home town of Donetsk.

Bubka immediately pledged to tackle Ukrainian sport’s perennial problems of funding, sponsorship and poor equipment and to improve on the country’s Olympic medal tally in Athens last year of nine golds, five silvers and nine bronze.

He agreed to work closely with the country’s new liberal authorities elected after last year’s tumultuous campaign.

Speaking to Reuters after the vote, Bubka said he was looking forward to the selection next month of the venue for the 2012 Games and praised all five candidate cities, London, Paris, Madrid, New York and Moscow in neighbouring Russia.—Reuters