Sky No Limit for Russian Pole Vaulter

People who challenge their limits look beautiful.

Among those, when a pole vaulter flies in the sky with one pole and bounds her limits showing her beautiful body in shape, every fan becomes crazy about the scene.

The prettiest “bird” around is Yelena Isinbayeva (24, Russia).

She has broken the world record eighteen times (including indoor games) since she cleared 4.82 m on July 14, 2003. And she became the first woman to clear a 5m metric barrier (5.01 m, the world record at present) at the World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki last year. If she appears at any world athletics event, she receives much attention from her fans.

Isinbayeva will take part in the 2006 Daegu International Championships in Athletics starting September 28, which is her first visit to Korea.

Daegu City invited her as a special guest to attract the world’s attention and to develop domestic athletics. Daegu is trying to win the competition for the 2011 World Championships in athletics.

Isinbayeva has an ideal body condition for a pole vaulter, having a height of 1m 74cm and a weight of 65 kg. She was trained to become a gymnast until she was fifteen. However, she grew too tall to be competitive in gymnastics. She changed her line to the pole vault in 1997 and became a world star. Her elasticity and flexibility trained by gymnastics are just perfect for jumping and clearing metric barriers in a pole vault.

Isinbayeva was set to pole vault in 1998 and made herself distinguished after she cleared 4.10m to take the gold medal at the World Youth Games in 1999.

She is a captain in the Russian army, and is currently studying for her doctor’s degree (Physical Culture) at the Volgograd State Academy. She likes dolphins, saying, “My dream after retirement is to swim with real dolphins.” She won the gold medal at European Championships last month, thereby attaining all of five gold medals from major events including Olympic Games, Indoor and Outdoor World Championships in Athletics, Indoor and Outdoor European Championships.

In addition to Isinbayeva, there are many popular stars around the world coming to Daegu, including Liu Xiang(23, China) who won the gold medal in 2004 Athens Olympic Games for 110 meter hurdles, Wilfred Bungei (26, Kenya) who marked the second in the world ranking for the male 800 meters to win at the Moscow World Indoor Championships, and Lauryn Williams (23, United States) who has a nickname “a short sprinter” because of her height of 1m 57cm, and also has the second world ranking for the female 100 meters.

yjongk@donga.com