The cunning of the pole

World record holder Isinbayeva lost for the first time in two years

Leading track and field athletes of the Old World continue their competitive preparations for the European Championships starting on August 7 in Gothenburg (Sweden) at the start of the World Athletic Tour. The Super Grand Prix stage held in Stockholm brought several completely unexpected results.

The main sensation of the DN Galan tournament in the Swedish capital was the defeat of the world record holder in the pole vault, Olympic champion of Athens Elena Isinbayeva. She cleared the bar at a height of 4 m 62 cm; Monika Pyrek showed exactly the same result, but the Russian woman spent more attempts. It’s hard to remember the last time Isinbayeva failed to take first place at any competition. But it is absolutely certain that this was back in the era of her intense rivalry with Svetlana Feofanova before the Summer Games. After the defeat in Athens, Feofanova somewhat lost her competitiveness, performed quite rarely, and Isinbaeva dealt with her foreign rivals quite easily, every now and then raising the bar for the world record until she brought it to a sky-high five-meter height, adding another centimeter. Pyrek’s personal achievement is as much as 29 cm lower than Isinbayeva’s best performance.

What happened in Stockholm? Eight of the devil's dozen participants in the women's pole vault competition made their first attempts at an initial height of 4 m 32 cm. When the bar was raised 10 cm higher, Pyrek and Feofanova entered the fight. Moreover, the Russian woman immediately coped with her task, but the Polish woman still made one unsuccessful jump. Isinbayeva, as befits the queen of this discipline, took the pole in her hands at the moment when nine participants had already sheathed their apparatus. However, from the first time, the Volgograd athlete, unlike Pyrek, did not conquer the height of 4 m 62 cm. This moment became key in the confrontation between the world record holder and the Polish woman. Both competitors could not overcome 4 m 72 cm, using all three attempts.

But a pleasant surprise occurred in the men's high jump sector. Ivan Ukhov and Andrey Silnov, who are at the end of the third hundred in the world ranking, beat the Olympic champion and host of the competition Stefan Holm, sorting things out between themselves at the line of 2 m 32 cm. Ukhov spent less on the attempt and became a sensational winner of the tournament, Silnov took second place on the podium. Both of these jumpers plus Yaroslav Rybakov were included in the Russian national team for the European Championships. So our team has good medal prospects in this discipline. Rybakov was only eighth in the Swedish capital - 2 m 24 cm. But the 1999 world champion Vyacheslav Voronin is performing very poorly this season. The maximum he was capable of in Stockholm was a jump of 2 m 15 cm, which is 10 cm worse than his result at the recent Russian Cup in Tula.

Oksana Udmurtova pleased me again. She won the third international long jump competition of the season - 6 m 74 cm. Moreover, the second prize-winner, Naide Gomes from Portugal, lost only one centimeter to Oksana. Olympic champion Yuri Borzakovsky finished only fourth in his signature 800 m distance. Yuri lost 0.69 seconds to the winner Youssef Saad Kamel (Bahrain).

The DN Galan tournament took place at the Olympic Stadium, which hosted the 1912 Summer Games. Since 1994, the management of this sports facility has been presenting athletes who set a new arena record with a diamond worth about $10,000. Based on the results of past competitions, the organizers placed an order for jewelers for seven such stones. Among those who received the right to this expensive prize was the Swedish high jumper Kajsa Bergqvist. After she cleared 2 m 02 cm, the hostess of the tournament asked to set the bar 1 cm higher than the world record of Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova, but she never reached 210 cm. At the European Championships, the Swede promises to make another attempt to surpass an achievement that has stood for 19 years. Russian Anna Chicherova lost to Bergqvist by a lot - 9 cm.

With a solid advantage of 0.11 seconds. over the second prize-winner, world record co-holder Asafa Powell won the 100-meter dash - 9.86 seconds. The runner from Jamaica also earned his diamond from the organizers and stadium management, as by 0.01 seconds. surpassed the result of the American Maurice Greene, shown by him in Stockholm back in 1999. The other special prize winners were American Jeremy Wariner (400m), Kenyan Kipchele Paul Koech (3000m hurdles), Norwegian javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen, Ethiopian Meseret Defar (3000m) and Powell's compatriot Sharon Simpson (200m).

Ilya TRISVIATSKY