Yelena Isinbayeva - Olympian - Pole Vaulter

Yelena Gadzhievna Isinbayeva (born June 3, 1982(1982-06-03)) is a Russian pole vaulter.

She is a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist (2004 and 2008), was elected Female Athlete of the Year by the IAAF in 2004, 2005 and 2008, and World Sportswoman of the Year by Laureus. On July 22, 2005, she became the first female pole vaulter to clear 5.00 metres.

At the age of 26 Isinbayeva is seen as the best female pole vaulter in history. She has already been a 9-time major champion (Olympic, World outdoor and indoor champion and European outdoor and indoor champion).

Isinbaeva’s current world records are 5.05 m outdoors, a record Isinbayeva set at the Summer Olympics Games in Beijing on August 18, 2008, and 4.95 m indoors, a record set at the Donetsk indoor meeting on February 16, 2008. The former was Isinbayeva’s twenty-fourth world record.

Isinbaeva’s mother is of Russian ethnicity, while her father is of Tabasaran ethnicity. She was born in Volgograd.

During the indoor season, Isinbaeva set her twenty-first world record, clearing 4.95 metres on 16 February 2008 in Donetsk, Ukraine. A few weeks later, in Valencia, Spain, Isinbaeva won the World Indoor Championships over Jennifer Stuczynski. It was Isinbaeva’s third consecutive World Indoor title.

On July 11, at her first competition of the season, Rome’s Golden Gala, Isinbaeva broke her own world record, clearing 5.03 metres. This was her first world record outdoors since the 2005 World Championships. Isinbaeva stated that she had tried so many times at 5.02 metres and was still unsuccessful, her coach told her to change something and so she attempted 5.03 metres. This record came just as people began to speculate her fall from the top of pole vaulting, as American Jennifer Stuczynski cleared 4.92 metres at the American Olympic Trials. Isinbaeva stated that this motivated her to maintain her reputation as the world’s greatest female pole vaulter. A few weeks later, at the Aviva London Grand Prix, Isinbaeva and Stuczynski competed together for the first time of the outdoor season. Isinbayeva won the competition, with Stuczynski finishing second. Both attempted a new world record of 5.04 metres. Isinbaeva was tantalizingly close on her final attempt, with the bar falling only after Isinbaeva had landed on the mat.

Isinbaeva broke her 19-day old world record on July 29, in Monte-Carlo, Monaco. She cleared 5.04 metres, her twenty-third world record, on her final attempt.

At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing on August 18, Isinbaeva needed merely two vaults to prolong her reign over the Olympic Title and went on to finish it in style by clearing 5.05m, her 24th world record.

On November 23rd of 2008, in Monaco, she was elected World Athlete of the Year by the IAAF for a third time in her career, along with Jamaican male sprinter Usain Bolt.

Source [ Wikipedia ]