Yelena Isinbayeva (© Getty Images)
It was commonly expected that the Women’s Pole Vault World record be broken this year. It was less expected that 21-year-old and former World junior champion Yelena Isinbayeva be the one who would clear 4.82m. David Powell met the young woman whose only regret was not to win gold at the World Championships
Yelena Isinbayeva was 15 when the course of her life changed. She had been a successful gymnast at home in Volgograd, Russia, but, exceeding 1.70 metres in height, she was considered too tall to become one of the best. So she was directed towards athletics but the change came as a shock to the girl who, six years later, would become the World outdoor record holder for the women's Pole Vault.
"I went in with my eyes closed," Isinbayeva recalled on a warm Saturday evening in Monte Carlo, as she prepared to take her place in the World Athletics Final. "I knew nothing about athletics. I knew gymnastics, and something about swimming and football, but I didn't know what athletics was." Pavel Voronkov, her manager, confirmed: "When her present coach said she would be a pole vaulter, she did not know what that would mean."
The coach to whom Voronkov was referring, Evgeniy Tromifov, clearly knew what he was doing. "Immediately I found the pole vault easy," Isinbayeva said. "In my first attempt, I jumped 2.80m. In my first competition, after four months, I jumped 3.50m. I was not disappointed to leave gymnastics. I stayed until I was 15 but I could not be the best, and I didn't win so many championships, because I was too tall."
Every year Isinbayeva has improved, setting World junior indoor records along the way, in 2000 and 2001. Last year she crept into the senior world top 10 but became a big star this year by breaking the World record in Gateshead, England, in July. Not that many spectators witnessed it. All but a few had gone home after the last track event, and the BBC live television coverage had ended, when Isinbayeva jumped 4.82m.
Thus this smiling, giggling, Russian added a centimetre to the record which had been held by Stacy Dragila, of the United States, for 25 months. Prior to the year, Isinbayeva had a competition best of 4.60m, although she had cleared 4.65m in an exhibition meeting. In Gateshead, though, with the competition won after Feofanova had managed to go no higher than 4.54m, Isinbayeva plotted her way to the World record.
"I had already jumped the World record," Isinbayeva said, referring to the 4.90m she had cleared in an unofficial competition with her training group in May. "But, on the morning of the Gateshead meeting, I felt tired because it was my seventh competition of the season. My coach saw that I looked tired and he came to my room with his camera and showed me jumping well. That motivated me. But I did not think about breaking the World record until after I had won.
"But, after I had won, I didn't ask immediately for the World record. The coach said I should do it step-by-step." So, having improved her best by one centimetre to 4.74m, she raised the bar to 4.82m. "This was a very clever decision by the coach, to go step-by-step," Voronkov said. Isinbayeva's first effort resulted in a failure but she succeeded on the second. "When I went over I thought 'Yes! My dream is reality now," she said.
Isinbayeva was not the first woman to set a Pole Vault World record in Gateshead but the difference between the two marks set there shows how the event has moved on. When Daniela Bartova, from the Czech Republic, set a World record in Gateshead in 1995, she cleared 4.14m. Now the leading women, and Isinbayeva in particular, have their sights on five metres. "I have jumpd 4.90m and five metres is only 10 centimetres lower," she said with an air of expectation.
"Maybe I can do five metres next year but the most important thing is to win the Olympics. It will be perfect if I can jump five metres in the Olympic Games." One lesson she has learned from the disappointment of her third place at the World Championships in Paris is that she competed too often before the big championship of the season. It is a lesson she believes may help her succeed in Athens.
According to Voronkov, Isinbayeva is "a very sunny girl, interested in everything, friendly with everyone, always open, and she likes it when everyone is paying attention to her." But she is also, he said, "very emotional". That was evident in Paris where, after finishing behind Feofanova, the winner, and Annika Becker, the silver medallist from Germany, her chin hit the floor.
"I was very upset," Isinbayeva said. "I cried." So what went wrong? "I was just tired. In the qualification round I felt good but in the final I felt bad. I will change my programme next year. This year was an experiment to see how many competitions I could do. Before Paris I did 11 or 12. Next year is the Olympic year and I will not jump so much. The right number before Athens will be three or four, I think."
Isinbayeva is referring to outdoor competitions because first she intends to compete at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest. It was in these championships, in Birmingham this year, that she won her first major senior medal, taking second place behind Feofanova. Outdoors, although she lost to Feofanova in Paris, she ended the season with three of the top five heights.
In addition to her World record, Isinbayeva vaulted 4.78m in the London Grand Prix, the equal third best height in history, and 4.73m in Poznan. Feofanova's best height was the 4.75m she cleared to win the World title. Of the relationship between the two Russian rivals, Isinbayeva said: "We say 'hi-hi, bye-bye', we don't talk." Voronkov explained: "They can talk about Pole Vault but they have no other items to discuss. Yelena is in Volgograd most of her life and Feofanova is in Moscow."
Isinbayeva added: "Feofanova is strong but definitely my technique is better. Bubka said my technique is super-better. My run is bad but, when I jump, I am better on the pole." Isinbayeva has been using a 4.45 metres pole but she said that she would move on to a 4.60 one next year.
When she is not training or competing, Isinbayeva's favourite pastime is reading. "Not just athletics but literature," she said. Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born American novelist, best-known for his 1955 work Lolita, which shocked people with its humour and literary style but was praised by critics, is her favourite. Nabokov wrote in Russian and English and it is Isinbayeva's language skills which impress Voronkov.
"She has big potential," Voronkov said, referring to her sponsorship appeal. "She is pretty and speaks English, so she is a very good person for the press." He added that a sponsorship group had begun to show an interest in her. "It is not easy in Russia to get sponsorship support," Voronkov said. "She has had offers from advertising companies but she decided it would take up too much of her time, which is not good before the Olympics."
Aged 21, Isinbayeva has no boyfriend. "Right now her only dream is the result," Voronkov said. Does she show an interest? "I have never seen it," he said. But she does show an interest in moving out of her parents' home and buying her own flat. "I want to buy a flat, I want to live alone," she said while Voronkov added, sympathetically: "When you are a young woman, you need your own space."
Certainly, she can afford the move. Isinbayeva's World record earned her a 50,000 dollar bonus. But she also likes to spend her money on clothes and cars. Born in Volgograd, she is from a modest family home. Her mother is a housewife, her father a metalworker while her 20-year-old sister is a fitness coach having shared Yelena's early sporting interest in gymnastics.
"My parents were not in sport but they liked sport and wanted their children to be great sportswomen," Isinbayeva said. The way pole vault's newest star is progressing, they are not going to be disappointed with Yelena.
David Powell is the Athletics correspondent for the English daily The Times
Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 4 - 2003
