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Isinbaeva Raises the Bar
Russia’s Elena Isinbaeva finally broke her own world record in women’s pole vault by hitting the bar of 5.03m at the Golden League in Rome July 11. Isinbaeva is today the obvious favorite for the Beijing Summer Olympics.
It was the 22nd world record of Elena. One of her most brilliant achievements dates back to July 22, 2005, when she hit the 5m bar in London, which had been regarded somewhat of a space mission for the women’s pole vault. She next improved it to 5.01m in Helsinki August 9, 2005.
There had been no records till past Friday but lots of speculations about the career stagnation of talented Russian. One of the reasons of the record delay was the fact that Elena left her coach Evgeny Trofimov for Vitaly Petrov, who had once trained Sergei Bubka, and needed some time to adjust to new training methods.
Meanwhile, Jenn Stuczynski of the U.S. emerged, showing the results nearing Isinbaeva. Stuczynski made it 4.90m in May and 4.92m in early July during the Olympic trials, triggering the reports about the end of Isinbaeva’s reign.
The Russian rebuffed all critics in Rome, when she won the tournament by taking 4.70m and 4.85m on the first approach. She took 4.95m on the second approach and asked for the bar of 5.03m, skipping the psychological deadlock of 5.02m.
The non-standard tactics of adding 2cm instead of the usual 1cm to the record worked perfectly that day, enabling Elena to finally improve her 5.01m record. Isinbaeva refused to speculate about the future height but mentioned an ambitious task – to prevail over legendary Bubka in number of records. The Ukrainian had 35 of them.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 14, 2008
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