Cover-girl Isinbayeva in pole for gold

By Andrew Moody (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-25 09:51

Yelena Isinbayeva is set to be one of the most dominant world champions at the Beijing Games.

The 26-year-old Russian, who earlier this month broke her own world record in Rome, is seen as a near certainty to take gold in women's pole vaulting.

Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia vaults to win the women's pole vault event at the Golden League meeting at Memorial Van Damme, in Brussels, in 2007. Isinbayeva intends to break her world record and win the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. AFP

The current World and Olympic champion has set 22 world records and is regarded as one of the most successful athletes of her generation.

The lithe competitor, often compared to fellow Russian Maria Sharapova for her cover-girl appeal, is hungry for more success.

She told the media after her Rome triumph, where she jumped 5.03m to beat her previous record set in 2005 by 2cm, that she has higher to go and that her aim is to smash the 35 world records set by Ukraine's Sergey Bubka in the men's pole vault.

"You saw I was not near at the bar, I was higher. My goal is to jump 36 world records," she said.

Isinbayeva will certainly be one of the most glamorous figures in Beijing. It was rumored that Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich chose her to be the "million-dollar face" of one of his main companies.

"The idea of being glamorous is very important to me. I always want to look like a girl. I don't agree that you are either a sportswoman or a girl. It's important that there are women who bring glamor to sport," she says.

Isinbayeva, who was the first woman in history to clear the once seemingly insurmountable 5m barrier at Crystal Palace in London in 2005, a year after taking gold at Athens, comes from a different background from the millionairess lifestyle she now leads.

Her father was a plumber and her mother a shop assistant and they struggled to support her and her sister in Volgograd.

Isinbayeva declared she wanted to be an Olympic champion at five and trained as a gymnast until 15 by which time she was considered too tall at 1.74m to ever make it at the top level.

Switching to pole vaulting, her early performances were far from impressive. At the World Junior Championships in France in 1998 she jumped just 4m, 10cm away from the medal placings.

Yet, a year later she took her first gold medal and was in the Russian team in the Sydney Olympics, when women's pole vaulting was an event for the first time.

One of the most intriguing battles of the 2004 Games was the battle between her and her fellow Russian Svetlana Feofanova, which was under the world's gaze because all other track and field events had finished. Isinbayeva took the top medal with a then world record of 4.91m, as her rival failing to scale 4.90m.

Soon afterwards Isinbayeva was seen as the greatest women's pole vaulter ever.

She won't be concerned if she attracts admirers in Beijing for other reasons, never afraid to declare that pole vaulting is good for body shape.

"The lower body and the upper body develop in proportion and that's why people say pole vaulters have beautiful bodies. I don't mind," she says.

(China Daily 07/25/2008 page6)