E-Paper
Isinbayeva follows Bubka's example
Centimetre by centimetre, Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva edges towards both the coveted five metres barrier and the consequent financial security.
Centimetre by centimetre, Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva edges towards both the coveted five metres barrier and the consequent financial security.
Isinbayeva has improved the world record by a centimetre six times this year, scaling 4.90 metres in London last month. Each time she has picked up a handsome bonus cheque.
At a news conference on Thursday, Isinbayeva was disarmingly honest about her motives.
"It's the big money, " she said in her halting but rapidly improving English. "I'm not a rich girl."
The parallel with Sergei Bubka is obvious. Bubka, who won the first of his six world titles in 1983, also picked up bonus money every time he raised the record to its present 6.15 metres.
These days Bubka is a member of the International Olympic Committee, a sophisticated sports politician who has come a long way since he won his first world title as a callow teenager from Ukraine in 1983. He is also comfortably off as a result of his spectacular craft.
Isinbayeva is favourite to win the Athens Olympics gold medal in the women's event which has provided thrills, spills and glamour in abundance since it was introduced at the 1999 Seville world championships.
Her goals are simple. She plans to first win the gold medal in the Athens Games final next Tuesday then extend the world by a further centimetre, doubling her $60,000 bonus money from the Russian federation.
"I will fight for gold, then I will try and break the world record," she said. "My competition is myself and the bar."
Isinbayeva equates the women's five metres pole vault to the men's six metres barrier, first cleared by Bubka.
"I think five metres and higher is possible," she said. "It's like the men's jump and the men jump six metres. I want to do it step by step like Bubka."
