http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/co ... 18,00.html
Teen vaulter poles apart
By Jenny McAsey
06mar06
WHILE most kids of her age were playing on the swings at the local park, Vicky Parnov was swinging in the air, playing at being a pole vaulter while her father, Alex, coached a host of Australia's best athletes.
One of those athletes, Kym Howe, the Australia and Commonwealth record-holder in the daredevil event, has known Parnov since she was eight years-old.
"To see her as a kid playing around and then to see her train - you just knew she was going to be a great athlete," Howe said.
Last month that prediction was proved right when Parnov was named to represent Australia in the pole vault at the Commonwealth Games.
At 15, Parnov will be the youngest athlete in the 106-member national track and field team.
She will have plenty of chaperones. Apart from Howe, who trains with her in Perth and is "like family", there will be her aunt, Olympic silver medallist Tatiana Grigorieva, who will also compete in the pole vault, as will Howe.
Despite her youth, Parnov will be at ease because she has grown up in what can only be termed a pole vault family - though she insists they talk about "normal stuff", not vaulting, at home.
Alex Parnov arrived in Australia from Russia almost 10 years ago, when Vicky was six and her younger sister, Liz, was two.
Apart from his wife, Nadia, and their children, Parnov came with two star students - Dmitri Markov and Viktor Chistiakov (who is Nadia's brother and Vicky's uncle).
Before long, Grigorieva joined her then-boyfriend, Chistiakov.
Eventually they all became Australian citizens, with Grigorieva winning Olympic silver for her adopted country in 2000 and Markov winning the 2001 world championship.
Pole vaulting in this country has been transformed by Alex Parnov's arrival, to the point where there is more depth in both the men's and women's events than most other nations.
If they were the first generation - along with his Australian-born pupils Emma George, Howe and top male vaulter Paul Burgess - then Vicky is set to be the leader of the next generation.
Already Liz, who is 11, is beating Vicky's early milestones and there are two younger sisters in the Parnov family.
"It won't be too long before Liz gets on the team as well," Howe said.
It was Aunty Tatiana's spectacular performance at the 2000 Sydney Olympics which inspired Vicky to take vaulting more seriously.
That year, aged nine, she cleared 2.13m. By the end of 2001, she was over 2.90m and by the time she was 12, she had smashed the three metre barrier.
Last year she set a new world record for a 14-year-old of 4.15m and last month increased her personal best to 4.30m, while under intense pressure at the Commonwealth Games selection trials.
Howe, who set the national record of 4.61m in January, is the gold medal favourite for the Commonwealth Games, but if Parnov vaults like she did at the trials, she should win a medal.
In year 11 at high school in Perth, Parnov is a typical teenager who prefers her sport and her friends to her school work.
"I just want to pole vault. It is social - you meet lots of people when you go away, you get to go around the world, if you are good enough, and it is just really fun," Parnov said.
She trains for two-and-a-half hours after school every day, which is about half the load of the older athletes in her father's training group, such as Howe, 25, and Burgess, 26.
But in other ways, her father does not let her off lightly.
"It is convenient because I know him so well, but he is firm with everyone, so I get what everyone else gets," she said.
Howe, who "went nuts" with excitement when Parnov made the Commonwealth Games team, said there were no favourites. "If Vicky does something wrong, he blasts her. If we do something wrong, he blasts us - so he is pretty fair across the board, which helps. She is not being treated any differently, she is one of us when she is out on the track. When she gets home, she is his daughter - but when she is out there, she is his athlete."
And potentially his best, ever.
"Vicky can be as good as she wants to be," said Burgess, who jumped higher than any other man in the world last year (6m). "I think she can be awesome."
