Hochsprung mit Musik

The Hochsprung mit Musik (High Jump with Music) is an annual indoor high jump meeting which takes place in February in Arnstadt, Germany.

First held in 1977, the meeting began as a competition between mainly East German athletes. Following the Re-unification of Germany in 1990, the competition became international and attracted athletes such as Olympic and World champion Charles Austin and Olympic silver medallist Alina Astafei. Both the world record holders (Javier Sotomayor and Stefka Kostadinova) have taken part in, and won, the meeting.

The Hochsprung mit Musik gets its name from the fact that music is played in the Sporthalle am Jahn-sportpark while athletes take their jump. It is used as a way of both building suspense and mirroring the steady rhythm needed by athletes to achieve a high jump.

The competition received greater exposure from the 2000s onwards as the winning athletes' jumps were of a significant height. This was exemplified by Kajsa Bergqvist's winning jump in 2006 of 2.08 metres – an indoor world record for the event and second only to Kostadinova's current world record of 2.09 m. Blanka Vlašić's win in 2010 with 2.06 m was the joint third highest indoor jump. A number of other indoor jumps by female athletes remain within the top 30 highest of all time, and jumps by male athletes frequently make the year's indoor best lists.

On February 8, 2014, the event took place for the 38th and final time after no successor was found for the outgoing assembly director, Hubertus Triebel.

Past winners


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