Vaulting towards Bubka's benchmark (Isinbayeva Article)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/athletics/c ... 87,00.html

Vaulting towards Bubka's benchmark

Yelena Isinbayeva, athlete of the year, relishes the glamour but still wants to keep breaking records

Donald McRae, Sports feature writer of the year
Tuesday January 3, 2006
The Guardian

After a year in which Yelena Isinbayeva dominated her rivals more convincingly than any other world champion in sport, becoming the first woman in history to clear the once mythical five-metre barrier in pole vaulting and earning millions of dollars in endorsements and record-breaking bonuses, her eyes glitter at the prospect of still greater glories and riches in 2006.
"The most important thing now," the athlete of the year says with typical assurance, "is to set as many world records as possible. Last year jumping five metres in London was the most special moment of my career. It was the historical moment. But I have another dream now. Thirty-six is in my head."

Sergei Bubka set 35 world records during his own extraordinary pole vaulting career and chasing down that number will drive Isinbayeva to new heights. She broke her own world record eight times last year and, at the age of 23, plans to continue jumping until the London Olympics in 2012. "I have 19 records now," Isinbayeva says, "and everything is possible."
It is difficult to think of any other sporting figure with the ability to set a world record almost every time he or she competes. Yet Isinbayeva reacts coolly to the charge that, though she might be the most commanding woman athlete on earth, there is a distinctly mercenary streak in her choosing to raise the record by a single centimetre most times she jumps. "Only people who are really envious say things like that. Anyone who is successful in their own work will know how much it takes to do this."

Isinbayeva offers instead a sporting justification for her commercially measured strategy. Comparing herself with the legendary American long jumper Bob Beamon - who seemed similarly far ahead of his contemporaries after he made his epic leap of 8.9m in 1968 - Isinbayeva argues that "I don't want the same thing to happen to me. He did that great jump but it was like a little flame that only caught light once. I want to keep burning."

The insinuation that Beamon failed in being remembered for "only" one jump - a monumental leap which stands alongside the four-minute mile as a landmark achievement - might sound arrogant. But it also provides telling insight into the depth of an ambition rooted in her home town of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. "Both my parents had to have three jobs to support me and my sister. My mother was a shop assistant but she also worked in the boiler room. My dad was a plumber."

Isinbayeva laughs and says "Da!", for once not needing the translator, when asked if her craving for success was forged amid such a stark upbringing. "I had a big ambition. Even when I was five I wanted to be an Olympic champion. My sport then was gymnastics and I had a lot of fantasies. We always felt life in Russia and life elsewhere in the world were completely different. That was why I dreamed of living somewhere else than Stalingrad."

At 15 she realised "it was not realistic to become an Olympic champion in gymnastics. But it wasn't painful because straightaway I took up pole vaulting and all my hopes went into this new sport. Gymnastics prepared me well and I quickly learnt the technique of jumping."

Such desire is not uncommon in Volgograd, from where three champion jumpers have emerged in recent years. Tatyana Lebedeva, the former world record holder in the triple jump, has been surpassed by Isinbayeva and the high-jumper Yelena Slesarenko who, like Isinbayeva, won Olympic gold in 2004 - but the pole vaulter is increasingly bracketed with another young Russian.

Her shared background with Maria Sharapova - and their mutual fascination with endorsement opportunities - means that "we are quite similar. Being famous sportswomen is not easy and her parents also sacrificed everything for her. And, like [Sharopova], 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 glamour to sport."

Isinbayeva relishes the male couch-potato's celebration of women pole vaulters. "It's the best proportioned of all sports," she laughs. "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."

Her lithe figure has encouraged wild speculation - epitomised by the claim that Roman Abramovich chose her to be the "million-dollar face" of Sibneft shortly before he sold the company. Isinbayeva laughs more nervously, explaining how an inventive rumour became a much repeated newspaper story. "I haven't signed a deal with them but I'd consider it an honour if they asked me."

Like Abramovich and Sharapova, Isinbayeva represents a new Russian wealth which is often resented at home. However, she still chooses to live in Volgograd, near her parents and sister. "I still feel very Russian. I also feel needed in Russia, so that's why I am there. Maybe in the future I will move but for now I stay in my flat in Volgograd."

Isinbayeva is so obviously happy swanning around Knightsbridge, shopping at Harrods and Harvey Nichols, that it is easy to imagine her opting for a sleeker life in one of the great cities of the world - London or Paris or Rome - where her affluence might be less conspicuous. And so she hesitates when considering the impact of her fame in Russia.

"I don't see so many changes in myself but the attitude of others has changed," she says. "Some put me on a pedestal but some are jealous. In Russia we say there is white envy and black envy. White envy is when you would like to have the same thing that someone else has - but you do not wish them harm. Black envy is when someone really wants you to fail more than succeed themselves. Those people who don't believe in themselves have black envy. And then some people just think I'm lucky. But they don't see me when I get up early to train. In summer they also have a nice holiday while I have a tough training schedule."

Unlike Sharapova, whose family headed for America when she was very young, Isinbayeva forged her career in the austere setting of Russian club competition where she represented a railroad military team. She is also an officer in the Russian army - which is not a station one could ever associate with Sharapova. Isinbayeva's athletic ambition is also notably grittier than Sharapova's even at her most determined. In choosing in November to leave Yevgeny Trofimov, the coach who discovered her, she proved again that she is no sentimentalist.

Isinbayeva brushes aside claims that Trofimov had not received his due financial reward. "He is maybe a little bitter but I am very accurate with money. I think he received enough and he understands for my growth as an athlete it is important to make the change. And no one can compare with [Vitali] Petrov; he is the best."

Petrov guided Bubka throughout his career and his coaching renown is such that he is likely to improve Isinbayeva's already imperious technique. Remembering that even two years ago five metres was considered an impossible challenge for a woman, Isinbayeva says that "people thought I'd never do it. But I had the desire. I wanted to reach it whatever it took."

On a memorable night at Crystal Palace last July the incentive for Isinbayeva to clear that symbolic mark was sufficiently high to break with her own tradition and raise the bar by 4cm from 4.96m. It is estimated that she earned an additional £250,000 on top of the $500,000 [£290,000] she had already made in world record bonuses. Isinbayeva said afterwards that she might buy herself a yacht but insists now "that was a joke. I like fast cars more. I once drove a test car at 220kph because I love speed. It gives you a very good emotion to go that fast."

There is also jubilation in sailing high in the air - a sensation she describes as "limitless happiness". The spin-offs in bonuses and commercials, as well as fame and glory, may seem similarly endless but there is something more pure in Isinbayeva's refusal to speculate on the exact height she might reach when she finally achieves her 36th world record. Bubka's greatest jump was 6.15m and he has always insisted that at least a metre will separate the best man from the best woman pole vaulter - suggesting that 5.15m will represent Isinbayeva's peak.

She smiles a smile as mysterious as it is steely. "It could be 50cm past that or maybe more. Nobody can say and I don't want to limit myself. I just want to jump higher and higher."

Yelena Isinbayeva will compete in the Norwich Union Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham on February 18

[rainbowgirl28]

This made my day:

She Wishes She'll Be Remembered Like Beamon:

"I don't want the same thing to happen to me. He (Bob Beamon) did that great jump but it was like a little flame that only caught light once. I want to keep burning."

-Yelena Isinbayeva pretending that there is some other reason besides money as to why she breaks the world record in the pole vault one centimeter at a time

[bvpv07]

This made my day:

She Wishes She'll Be Remembered Like Beamon:

"I don't want the same thing to happen to me. He (Bob Beamon) did that great jump but it was like a little flame that only caught light once. I want to keep burning."

-Yelena Isinbayeva pretending that there is some other reason besides money as to why she breaks the world record in the pole vault one centimeter at a time

oh wow of course that's the reason

I don't know, but she always seems a bit too cocky...confidence is great, but...ah, it's just a thing that I notice...but perhaps I just have one of the two types of Russian envies

no one better mess with her though...I didn't know that she was an officer in the Russian army

[rainbowgirl28]

Haha nothing like taking quotes out of context for some good laughs.

From the T&F News Board:

ISINBAYEVA RELISHES THE MALE COUCH-POTATO!!!

[SKOT]

"I don't want the same thing to happen to me. He did that great jump but it was like a little flame that only caught light once. I want to keep burning."

isnt it true that bob beman had sex for the first time (before a meet) the night before that meet??? that is just a querky little fact that always cracks me up