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Tatiana craves dizzy heights again
Fiona Purdon
20jan06
GLAMOROUS pole vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva has revealed that a burning ambition to achieve her potential and retaste the adrenalin rush of competitive success stopped her from "giving up".

Gold Coast-based Grigorieva rekindles her Commonwealth Games campaign at the Queensland championships, starting at QEII stadium tonight.

The Sydney Olympic silver medallist returned this week from a three-month intensive training camp at the Italian Olympic centre in Formia following a successful stint in Europe and Asia, including upsetting world champion Yelena Isinbayeva at the IAAF competition in Japan in October.

Grigorieva hopes the bold gamble to relink with coach Vitaly Petrov and gain insights by training alongside Isinbayeva will pay off.

She credits Petrov for her success between 1999 and 2001, the year of her 4.56m personal best which included a bronze medal at the 1999 world championships.

"Definitely from 1999 to 2001, they were fantastic years. I would like to come back to the same level and last year was a big stepping stone," she said.

"I still feel I've got my best jumps in me. That's what keeps me coming out every day to train.

"The easiest way would have been just to give up and do something else but I knew I could be successful in pole vault, that it was still in me. The adrenalin rush of competition becomes addictive."

Grigorieva said her lowest point came in 2004, the year of her high-profile split with husband Victor Chistiakov, and her results reflected her personal life.

She is now "happy" with her life despite no modelling shoot or sponsor on the horizon.

Her focus is training and she is keen to improve on her A-qualifying jump of 4.47m which ranks her second in the Commonwealth.

"The state championships are the first test for me, to see what kind of results I achieve, how I'm feeling and what needs to be done," she said.

Grigorieva will oppose A-qualifier Alana Boyd (4.30m) while Katrina Miroschnichkenko (4.15m) leads a charge of four who have all jumped over 4m.

"It's good to have Tatiana back and in the mix. It should spice things up," said rival Boyd.

Pole vault queen Tatiana Grigorieva got back on a winning note at the Queensland championships at QEII on Sunday.

Grigorieva won the pole vault with a B-qualifying 4.20m effort which she achieved on her third attempt.

She then ran through all three attempts at 4.30m and admitted after the competition she had been tiring in the difficult windy conditions.

http://www.bordermail.com.au/newsflow/p ... id=1125962

Tatiana content despite shortfall



FORMER pin-up Tatiana Grigorieva made a winning return to Australian competition yesterday but recognised she had turned from the hunted into the hunter.

Grigorieva fought off one challenger, Alana Boyd, when she won the pole vault at the Queensland athletics championships but her clearance of 4.20m was well below the mark, set on Saturday in Perth, of West Australian Kym Howe.

Howe recorded a personal best 4.50m in the Perth meet to grab favouritism for the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in March.

The trio, who have all posted A-qualifying leaps (4.30m), will face off in the national selection trials in Sydney from February 2-5.

Grigorieva scaled 4.55m in winning silver at the Sydney Olympics but was not perturbed by yesterdays performance in blustery winds and high temperatures.

She had three run-throughs in attempting 4.30m after clearing 4.20m with her third and final jump at the mark.

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/c ... 89,00.html

Tatiana passes first test in style
Fiona Purdon
23jan06
POLE vault queen Tatiana Grigorieva got back on a winning note, but rising high jump prince Kane Brigg stole the field event show at the Queensland championships at QEII yesterday.

Grigorieva won the pole vault with a B-qualifying 4.20m effort which she achieved on her third attempt.

She then ran through all three attempts at 4.30m and admitted after the competition she had been tiring in the difficult windy conditions.

Brisbane's Alana Boyd also achieved the 4.10m B-qualifying mark but after passing on 4.20m did not look close to equalling her personal best of 4.30m.

Gold Coast teenager Charmaine Lucock qualified for the world junior championships with 4m.

Constant showers on the Gold Coast last week meant Grigorieva had been unable to make any training jumps outdoors since she arrived back in Australia a week ago.

Strong crosswinds hampered competition yesterday but Boyd said she needed to be mentally stronger to overcome such obstacles.

Grigorieva said that after three months of training indoors in Italy with world champion Yelena Isinbayeva, she needed a few days of outside training to adjust to the conditions.

"I was pretty happy. It was my first competition back, my first test," Grigorieva said.

"I've only just landed back in Australia and I'm still adjusting to the conditions."

Grigorieva was confident she would be ready for the Games trials in Melbourne in a fortnight and of tackling emerging West Australian jumper Kym Howe, who cleared 4.50m on Saturday in Perth.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/gri ... 88294.html

Grigorieva takes a Russian lesson

By Len Johnson
January 22, 2006

TATIANA Grigorieva has been watching Yelena Isinbayeva closely in recent times. The so-far peerless Russian vaulter is the only woman to have cleared five metres and won the gold medal at the world championships in Helsinki with a world record 5.01 metres.

Grigorieva was in both the five-metre competitions. She capped a gritty comeback to world-class competition by reaching the Helsinki final, although once there had a day she would sooner forget. She cleared only her opening height of four metres, 101 centimetres short of the winning performance.

So the Australian had time and opportunity to watch Isinbayeva. Now, she has had even closer exposure. Isinbayeva recently began working with Vitaliy Petrov, the pole vault master coach who guided Sergey Bubka's career and now coaches Grigorieva.

Grigorieva has just spent three months in Europe training with Petrov, part of that time with Isinbayeva as well.

"It's been very good, very inspiring," she said yesterday. "She is the only woman to have cleared five metres, so it's good to see what she is doing in training."

Grigorieva returned to Australia a week ago and returns to competition today in the Queensland state titles. She is hoping the rain swirling around south-east Queensland clears to allow the competition to proceed as she will compete only twice before the Australian championships in Sydney next month.

Grigorieva's toughest rival will be Alana Boyd, the daughter of 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth men's pole vault champion Ray Boyd and 1978 women's 200 metres champion Denise Boyd, who has already reached the Commonwealth A-standard this year, vaulting 4.30 in November. She has reportedly cleared 4.40 in training.

Two of Australia's best-ever throwers will be watched with interest, too. Justin Anlezark, the only Australian man to reach an Olympic shot put final, continues his return from finger surgery. He threw just short of 20 metres twice last weekend and is building towards a "clash of titans" with Victorian rival Scott Martin in Canberra on Thursday night.

Martin added a centimetre to his Victorian state record when he threw 20.11 last week.

Tatiana to vault back on podium
By Damian Barrett
February 3, 2006

TATIANA Grigorieva has endured enough setbacks in the past three years to know nothing is certain about her sporting future, but she is allowing herself the luxury of being excited anyway.

The woman who propelled pole vaulting on to the list of sports that most interested Australians, Grigorieva feels she is ready to resume her once-regular place on podiums at major championships.

Recent performances, particularly a leap of 4.41m in Canberra last week and an uninterrupted training program, have even given hope that the best may be ahead.

"I certainly don't feel I am near the end, this is my best season in 2 1/2 years and at least I can now feel good again about what is coming up," said the Olympic silver medallist and Commonwealth Games champion.

"I have had three months of solid training overseas without distractions, I had a good training partner, I was able to set up a very good base and now I have had a couple of competitions in Australia, I think the nationals [championships] look pretty good for me.

"The last couple of years were difficult, had injuries, and was constantly looking at ways to getting my body back and fit again, had to try different things, work out what worked and what didn't and I think it is coming together."

Grigorieva turned 30 last October.

She was 24 when her career reached its high at the Sydney Olympics, when she had an epic duel with the United States' Stacy Dragila, and 26 when she cruised to the gold medal at the Manchester Commonwealth Games. Since Manchester, because of injuries ranging from hamstring tears to a broken finger, she has watched her rivals take over the sport, missing the 2003 world championships and Athens Olympics, and managing just 12th at last year's Helsinki world titles.

Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva is now the pole vault queen, and only last month Grigorieva was removed as holder of the Commonwealth record when Australian Kym Howe jumped 4.61m in Canberra last week. An injured Howe has been ruled out of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games selection trials that began at Homebush yesterday, leaving Grigorieva as the favoured competitor in tomorrow's pole vault final. With her body back in order, Grigorieva is hopeful her most renowned skill - mindpower - will also return.

"A lot of people say I am a big occasion performer, that I perform under pressure better than I do when there is less pressure, and it has always been the same for me, and hopefully I still have it in me," she said.
"It is something you can't train for or work on. You have it or you don't have it and I have it. And now I hope I haven't lost it over the past two years."

Grigorieva said she does not deliberately set out to intimidate opponents but was aware of the powerful effect of her game-day persona.

Source

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/ ... 55195.html

Leap of faith

March 4, 2006

Tatiana Grigorieva's career looked to have bottomed out but, as the Commonwealth Games champion tells Len Johnson, she's back to prove her critics wrong.

When Tatiana Grigorieva cleared 4.40 metres in the qualifying competition of the pole vault at last year's world championships in Helsinki, she felt uncharacteristically good.

"I felt,'I'm a winner'," Grigorieva said this week.

Grigorieva is not one for misplaced triumphalism. An Olympic silver medallist on "Cathy's night" in Sydney, a world championships bronze medallist the year before in Seville and fourth in the final the year afterwards in Edmonton, the Commonwealth champion in 2002 - she doesn't turn up merely to make up the numbers.

Nor had she on this occasion."I didn't come here to compete in the qualifying, I really came here to make the final," she said, repeating the words she had also used before the championships started.

The key to Grigorieva's feelings was revealed a few moments later."I just love proving people wrong," she said.

"People"were those who had doubted her during a barren two years that started even before Manchester 2002.Those who had not rated her attempts to qualify for the previous year's Olympic team and had waited for the final moment, and an A-qualifier to add to numerous B-standards, before confirming her in the team for Helsinki.

Yet here she was, coming out on the first day of the championships, vaulting in difficult conditions that reduced many of the world's best to snivelling wrecks throughout the championships, and nailing a difficult clearance to make the final.

"There was a bit of drama,"Grigorieva said this week."A few felt I shouldn't even be in the team. I had a standard and they still wouldn't pick me. Then I got an A-standard.

"It was twice as hard. I was battling with everything and yet I still had to prove myself. That step (making the final) was extremely important to me, both in terms of proving to people that I deserved to be there, and proving to myself a little bit, too."

Grigorieva's problems had started even before she won in Manchester in 2002. She was battling injury and, although she took the gold comfortably enough, it was hardly a commanding performance. She had cleared 4.44 to win the Australian title earlier that year and she would not return to those heights again until just before Helsinki last year.

Compounding the physical problems, Grigorieva's marriage to Viktor Chistiakov was falling apart, eventually rupturing in 2003.The man she had called"my wall" was no longer part of her personal or professional life. She relocated from Adelaide to the Gold Coast.

Grigorieva has never been one to bring her personal life into the public arena. She has steered away from discussing the details, and still does. "It has been difficult, both personally and professionally," is about all Grigorieva will say.

As the downward spiral kicked in, Grigorieva started to attract criticism for the things she had done all along. When she launched product ranges and did modelling jobs while things were going well, no one said a word. Once things started to go bad, critics suggested she was concentrating on the glamour side of her life at the expense of her athletic performance.

Grigorieva says simply that she "can't separate one thing from the other". She has to generate an income if she is to finance going to Europe to train with her coach, Vitali Petrov, the man who guided Sergey Bubka pretty well throughout the vault legend's career.

"I consider myself a professional athlete," Grigorieva says, "so I have to make a living out of (athletics) and other things I can find. Some of the things I did, I did because I wanted to relax."

Others, such as being the face of the Melbourne spring racing carnival, were a chance to experience a big part of Australian culture. "You don't find out about that sort of thing sitting at home in your apartment," Grigorieva says.

Grigorieva kept working away at her health and fitness throughout her "down" time. She says there was no one turning point.

"There wasn't one day where I just didn't feel like doing anything any more and then I woke up the next day feeling better," Grigorieva says. "But I just had this gut feeling that I had to do it and if I kept doing what I knew how to do, it would eventually get better."

Grigorieva cleared 4.30 in the 2004 domestic season, but could not force her way into the Olympic team. She started 2005 off some reasonable domestic results but broke her finger during a training session. Still, she backed herself by going to Europe to train with Petrov and, narrowly, it paid off.

Grigorieva probably cannot even count herself as favourite to defend her Commonwealth crown. That status goes to Kym Howe, silver medallist four years ago, who set a Commonwealth record 4.61 in Canberra on Australia Day.

Grigorieva cleared 4.41 that day for second place, which was not too shabby, and then looked the best she had for years in winning the Australian title at 4.45. Howe was absent injured, but Grigorieva cleared every height first time.

It was a long time since she had jumped like that, Grigorieva agreed. "But it's a long time since I've done many of the things I have done in training in the last few months," Grigorieva added.

Whatever happens, Tatiana Grigorieva will be a threat at the MCG this month. Even a year ago, it was hard to see that situation arising.

One thing for sure, she will compete to her utmost. Just being there, this time, will not be a cause for celebration.