 He set his personal best mark of at the Brothers Znamensky Memorial in Leningrad in 1986.This mark is a former European record and made him the fourth best jumper ever at the time (after Willie Banks, João Carlos de Oliveira and Charles Simpkins).The European mark was beaten later that year by Bulgarian Khristo Markov and it remained the Soviet national record until 1990, when it was beaten by Vladimir Inozemtsev.