Isinbayeva, Yelena

▪ 2006

 Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva lifted herself to a position of unchallenged mastery in her event in 2005, raising the women's outdoor world record five times during the year and becoming the first woman to soar over the 5-m (16-ft 4³/₄-in) mark. The 23-year-old Isinbayeva, whose career world-record tally stood at 20 (11 of them set outdoors) at the end of 2005, was named track and field's woman Athlete of the Year for a second consecutive season by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

      Isinbayeva was born in Volgograd, U.S.S.R., on June 3, 1982. She was enrolled by her parents in gymnastics school at age 4, but a growth spurt when she was 15 suddenly made her too tall to compete effectively in the sport—she eventually reached a height of 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in). Pole vault coach Yevgeny Trofimov invited her to try that sport, and the next season, in July 1998, she vaulted 4.00 m (13 ft 1¹/₂ in). She won the 1999 world youth title and the 2000 world junior title, and in 2001 she broke both indoor and outdoor junior world records.

      She defeated Russian rival Svetlana Feofanova, the reigning world champion, for the first time in March 2003. That summer Isinbayeva surpassed American Stacy Dragila's world record with a 4.82-m (15-ft 9³/₄-in) vault and then triumphed in two more major athletics meets over fields that included Feofanova and Dragila. Isinbayeva finished third at the 2003 IAAF world outdoor championships, but by the 2004 IAAF world indoor championships, she had taken charge, winning the title with an indoor world record. Although Feofanova claimed one more record in July 2004, Isinbayeva produced a string of five world records that summer, including the 4.91-m (16-ft 1¹/₂-in) clearance that won her the Olympic gold medal in Sydney.

      Although vaulters usually followed the practice of raising the world record one centimetre (0.4 in) at a time—and only once per competition—in order to maximize performance bonuses from sponsors, Isinbayeva approached the bar differently at the London Grand Prix in July 2005. She raised the record first to 4.96 m (16 ft 3¹/₄ in) and then to 5.00 m.

      Isinbayeva, who developed a reputation for calm confidence and for jumping her highest at important competitions, was dubbed “Bubka in a skirt” by Russian sportswriters who deemed her prolific record-setting reminiscent of former men's world-record holder Sergey Bubka. After winning her first outdoor world championship title—and raising the record yet again, to 5.01 m (16 ft 5¹/₄ in) in August 2005—she avoided serious talk about ultimate height goals but said that she hoped to claim 36 world records in her career—one more than Bubka's total. In the fall of 2005, Isinbayeva dropped Trofimov as her coach and announced plans to train at Bubka's vault centre in Donetsk, Ukraine.

Sieg Lindstrom

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