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Feature: Isinbayeva emulates Bubka
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-07-29 11:40
Donetsk in the far east of Ukraine during the month of February is not at
first glance an obvious setting for feats of athletic excellence.
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| Yelena Isinbayeva | The city is snowbound, the Kalmius river is frozen solid and coal smoke
stains the grey sky.
It is also, though, the city which produced Sergei Bubka, the human catapult
who set 35 world records and won six world titles and one Olympic one.
Bubka, now a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the International Olympic
Committee (IOC), is honoured officially by a statue and less formally by a
sports bar.
Every year he stages a pole vault competition in his native city and this
February he invited the Russian who has promised to do for the women's pole
vault what he did for the men's.
Yelena Isinbayeva set eight world records last year, including a leap of 4.91
at the Athens Olympic Games.
Disarmingly frank about the financial incentives
attached to raising the record by a centimetre at a time, a trick she learned
from Bubka, Isinbayeva brought glamour and excitement to the most spectacular of
the field events.
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