Yelena Isinbayeva sports discipline competed in pole vault
Career
Early life and competition
Born to a Tabasaran father and a Russian mother in Volgograd, Isinbayeva trained as a gymnast from the age of 5 to 15. She ultimately left the sport because, as she grew, she was considered too tall to be competitive in gymnastics, ultimately attaining a height of 1.74 metres (5 ft 8.5 in).
Six months after having taken up pole-vaulting she won her first major victory at age 16 during the 1998 World Youth Games in Moscow, Russia with a height of 4.00 m. It was her third athletic competition. She jumped the same height at the 1998 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Annecy, France, but this left her 10 cm away from the medal placings.
In 1999, Isinbayeva improved on this height at the 1999 World Youth Championships in Athletics in Bydgoszcz, Poland when she cleared 4.10 m to take her second gold medal.
At the 2000 World Junior Championships in Athletics Isinbayeva again took first place clearing 4.20 m ahead of German Annika Becker. The same year the women's pole vault made its debut as an Olympic event in Sydney, Australia where Stacy Dragila of the United States took gold. In the same event Isinbayeva did not make it out of the qualifying round.
She won another gold medal in 2001, this time at the European Junior Championships with a winning height of 4.40 m.
Isinbayeva continued to improve and 2002 saw her clear 4.55 m at the 2002 European Athletics Championships, where she gained her first senior championship medal (silver), finishing 5 cm short of her compatriot Svetlana Feofanova.First world records and Olympic title
2003 was another year of progression and saw Isinbayeva win the European Under 23 Championships gold with 4.65 m (in Bydgoszcz). On 13 July 2003, just about a month after her 21st birthday, Isinbayeva set her first world record at a meeting in Gateshead, England with a height of 4.82 m, which had made her the favourite to take gold at the 2003 World Championships in Athletics the following month. She ended up winning the bronze medal with Feofanova taking gold and Becker the silver.
At a meeting at Donetsk, Ukraine, Isinbayeva set a new indoor world record, with a height of 4.83 m only to see Feofanova increase this by two centimetres the following week. The following month at the Worlds Indoor Championships in March Isinbayeva broke Feofanova's record with a gold medal-winning jump of 4.86 m beating reigning indoor & outdoor champion Feofanova into bronze with reigning Olympic champion Dragila taking silver. The IAAF considered all three records to be over-all (outdoor) records, hence the indoor and outdoor records now stood at 4.86 m
27 June saw Isinbayeva return to Gateshead and improved the world record to 4.87 m. Feofanova responded the following week by breaking the record by a centimetre in Heraklion, Greece.
On 25 July in Birmingham, England, Isinbayeva reclaimed the record jumping 4.89 m and five days later in Crystal Palace, London, added a further centimetre to the record.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Isinbayeva won gold medal with a new world record height of 4.91 m. She subsequently broke the record later that year at the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels with a 4.92 m jump, her eighth world record of the season. Isinbayeva was named World Athlete of the Year for winning the Olympic & World Indoor title and breaking the World record eight times.
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