A wonder year for Isinbayeva wonder woman

With eight World records, the World Indoor and Olympic titles, 2004 has been an amazing year for Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva who was crowned World Athlete of the Year. Bob Ramsak spoke to the young woman whose main ambition now is to be the first to clear 5 metres in competition.

By any measure, it was the picture postcard perfect day.

The inviting sun high above the Mediterranean was shining brightly down on an exquisite cloudless afternoon. A pair of anchored luxury cruise ships floated lazily in the distance. Just to the west, a trio of extravagant yachts were slowly making their way out to sea, with the Monte Carlo skyline and dramatic mountains rising and glistening behind them. Standing on the roof of Monte Carlo’s Grand Hotel, Yelena Isinbayeva was enjoying the vista of one of the world’s richest cities with a warm, dreamy smile while preparing for a television shoot with Pole Vault legend Sergey Bubka.

It was a scene the 22-year-old Russian could never have imagined less than seven years ago. Then an aspiring gymnast in her native Volgograd, she was convinced by her coach that she had simply outgrown her first love. It was time to move on; he suggested she try the Pole Vault, an emerging event.

Before beginning their fruitful relationship, she remembers her new coach, vault specialist Yevgeny Trofimov, asking her if she knew who Bubka was.

Breaking into a wide grin and bubbling with laughter, she recalls, “I answered, ‘No, who is she?’ I didn’t know anything about the Pole Vault, about Bubka, or even how to do it.”

Today, with a year-long spree of World records, an Olympic gold medal and IAAF Athlete of the Year honours behind her, she is often mentioned in the same breath as the men’s World record holder, her male counterpart who propelled his event into uncharted waters nearly two decades ago. Isinbayeva has of course, done the same, transforming even Bubka, once accused of not taking the women’s event seriously, into its number one fan. The event has grown up to become perhaps the most popular on the athletics program. And with it, so has Isinbayeva.

Just a year ago when she burst onto the scene after her first World record at the Norwich Union Super Grand Prix in Gateshead, Isinbayeva was an aloof newcomer, and certainly more shy. Today, she’s more often than not characterized as “bubbly” and “jovial,” “excitable” and “exciting,” “athletic” and even “glamorous.” She doesn’t shy away from the cameras, and they don’t shy away from her.

Beginning that day six years ago when she made her major career move, one that would catapult her to stardom, it didn’t take long to acquaint herself with Bubka’s technique, style and substance. A near-daily ritual of watching the Ukrainian on video took care of that. “We talked about technique, about Bubka, and we read a lot of books,” she recalls of her first months as a vaulter. Simply put, she says, “My coach taught me to jump like Bubka. From the beginning he would say, ‘you have to jump like Bubka.’”

It eventually led to her first-ever successful clearance, a 2.80 effort. “It was good,” she says, laughing. “I was happy.” Based in a jumping school in Volgograd, where her training mates include World and Olympic champions Tatyana Lebedeva and Yelena Slesarenko - “We’re always together,” she says, “We’re friends of course” - she hasn’t stopped climbing since.

Her first dose of international competition - along with her winning ways - came in 1999, just her second year in the event, with a win at the World Youth Championships. “It was my first great victory and I was so, so happy,” she recalls. “And it was a surprise for me and my coach. Then every year I had good progress.”

One could argue that her progress has been much better than just “good.” She scaled four meters in 1998, and improved by 20 centimeters each of the next two years. By 2001, she was the World Junior record holder, with clearances of 4.47 indoors, and 4.46 outdoors. By the time she improved to 4.60 in 2002, she had already become an avid collector of medals. After a sixth place finish at the European Junior Championships in 1999 and a seventh place showing at the European Indoor Championships the following year, she won the World Junior title in 2000, the European Junior title in 2001, struck silver at the 2002 European Championships and 2003 World Indoor Championships, and took home the bronze at the 2003 World Championships in Paris. Her World record-setting binge began in Gateshead in July of that year, when she negotiated 4.82.

In Budapest earlier this year, she took her first global title, raising the World record to 4.86 in the process. Solidly defeating both compatriot Svetlana Feofanova, the reigning World indoor and outdoor champion and former World record holder, and American Stacy Dragila, the reigning Olympic champion, Isinbayeva emerged from the Hungarian capital as the overwhelming favourite for Olympic gold.

Fittingly, her strongest test would come in Athens, on the sporting world’s biggest stage, where she found herself in strangely unfamiliar territory: with her back up against a wall and on the verge of her own Greek tragedy.

“When I started the competition, I felt good,” she says, recalling the Olympic final. “I cleared 4.40, 4.45, 4.65, everything was okay.” With the bar raised a few notches to 4.70, she switched to a stiffer pole at Trofimov’s request, but couldn’t penetrate the jumping plane. She missed badly.

“I was scared,” she readily admits. “I ran to my coach and said, ‘What can I do? What can I do?’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, just pass this height and jump at 4.75. I know you can do it, so don’t worry.’”

Again she missed.

“At that moment,” she said, pausing while recounting her terror, “It was a shock. Because I lost confidence. And I came to my coach again and said, ‘I’m scared, what do I have to do?’”

But Trofimov was unruffled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just jump like you do in training. You can jump five meters, 5.10. It’s no problem for you. Just do what I tell you.”

It was a brief, succinct, but highly assuring pep talk that reinstilled that urgently-needed confidence.

Ignoring best she could the cameras projecting her stern and composed look of determination to the world, she closed her eyes to visualize a successful clearance. After a series of quick, short breaths, she chanted her secret pre-jump mantra, and charged down the runway to duplicate the jump she envisioned just a minute before. She said she was on the verge of tears as she fell to the pit, almost expecting the bar to fall with her. But it didn’t.

“I felt then that I had won,” she recalls. When Feofanova bowed out with three successive misses of her own at 4.80, 4.85 and 4.90, the title of Olympic champion was officially hers. But the night was far from over.

“When Svetlana didn’t make her jumps, I said to myself, ‘You’re Olympic champion! Can you believe it?’ But then I said, ‘No, it’s not over. I want to jump the World record. Let’s go!’’

Ever the crowd pleaser, Isinbayeva requested that the bar be raised to 4.91. With the pressure gone, she towered over the cross bar with ease on her first attempt. It was the first World record set in the Olympics since Michael Johnson’s legendary 200 metre dash in 1996.

“That record was for the crowd,” she says. “Because they waited and waited for the World record. They wanted to see it and it was a present for all of them, and for my coach, my parents, my friends, for all the people who believed in me and helped me prepare for the Olympic Games.”

While she’s improved the World record nine times already - most recently at the Van Damme Memorial in Brussels for her eighth global standard of 2004 - she insists that there’s nothing robotic or the least bit effortless about the process. At the season-capping World Athletics Final, where a successful record attempt was worth a whopping $100,000, she missed three attempts at 4.93, displaying perfectly that World records don’t simply fall from the sky.

“Some people say, ‘Oh it’s easy to jump for World records. We saw you, you always smile, you feel good, you jump very easy.’ But no, it’s very difficult for me. Every competition I need good concentration and I need the crowd to help me. And I need to feel their energy. When the crowd’s clapping and cheering, that energy comes into me.”

Here too she duplicates Bubka as well, choosing to add to the World record one centimetre at a time. While the process adds significantly to her bank accounts as well, she insists that record bonuses are not the driving force for her.

“It’s not just about the money,” she says. “The crowd wants to see records, and they support me, so it’s for them. If I go up by one centimetre, it means that people keep talking about me, about the Pole Vault and about athletics. This way you also have some suspense and it’s more exciting for the audience.”

Her uncanny ability to perform for her audience when it matters most, first this year at the World Indoor Championships and again in Athens, has shielded her with an aura of invincibility. But she was beaten on two occasions this season - both times, it took a World record by Feofanova to do it - and refuses to allow her competitive confidence to stray towards a willful arrogance. To the contrary, she has nothing but respect for her fellow competitors, most of all Feofanova, whom she supplanted as the world’s premiere vaulter.

“When Svetlana jumped 4.88 in Iraklio, Greece, I saw it and I felt bad,” she says. “But I know that she and others are very good competitors. In the Olympics, when I jumped 4.80, I was winning, but I could not rest because I knew that Svetlana can clear 4.85 and 4.90. Because she’s very strong. And psychologically she’s very strong. It helps me to jump higher. I never can rest. They motivate me to never stop, to never give up.”

Just 22, she’s much to young to rest on her laurels. In 2005, her guiding light will be Helsinki as she goes for the one major title missing from her growing collection. She hopes to crown that achievement with the first-ever five metre clearance.

“I know I can jump five metres,” she says, apparently speaking from experience. “My personal best is five metres, from a training session in June.” After that leap, she says, that magic barrier is but a number whose days are definitely numbered. “When I jumped it, I thought, ‘Okay, it’s not as high as I thought.’ I had a lot of mistakes. But of course I want to be the first to jump it in competition. It’s my dream to be the first to jump five metres. It’s coming soon.”

Her desire to be the first five-metre woman is driven by more than mere dreams. She says she’ll graduate to longer 4.60 poles from her current 4.45 versions next season, utilize a higher grip, and work specifically on her speed, an aspect she considers her main weakness.

“I think I have the best technique in women’s Pole Vault,” she says, “but I know my speed is not so good. I have to work on my speed. But it’s getting better now.” With a footnote that might sound ominous to her competitors, she adds, “That will help me jump not only higher, but better.”

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 4 - 2004