Isinbayeva sets world indoor best

Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva expended the minimum energy to the maximum effect on Saturday when she set a world indoor pole vault best in her first competition of the year.

Isinbayeva, who set eight world records indoors and out last year, vaulted 4.87m at the Sergei Bubka annual pole vault competition in Donetsk.

The mark bettered the 4.83m she cleared at the Budapest world indoors championships last year but is five centimetres short of the world record she vaulted outdoors in Brussels last September.

World records can now be set either outdoors or indoors.

During a four-hour competition at the 16th edition of the meeting set up by Bubka in 1990, Isinbayeva vaulted only four times and also ran through her first attempt at 4.87.

She is now quickly becoming the female equivalent of the great Ukrainian, who set 35 world records during a 18-year international career.

Anna Rogowska set a Polish record of 4.75 for second place but nobody, including 2000 Olympic champion Stacy Dragila of the United States, posed any serious challenge to Isinbayeva's supremacy.

"This is the first world mark of the year," Isinbayeva said. "I'm sure there will be more."

BUBKA TRIBUTE

Bubka paid tribute to the Ukrainian.

"She is in great form and she is an absolutely great athlete with wonderful potential."

American Derek Miles set a personal best of 5.85 at the age of 32 to win the men's event, ahead of Russian Igor Pavlov. "I have come here for three years and it's the highest I have jumped," he said. "For me, it was a personal battle with the bar.

"I feel I can jump 5.90."

The event was conducted against a background of ear-splitting music, with each contestant choosing their own track.

Viktor Yanukovich, who was briefly President last year before the Supreme Court overturned the result, was amongst a crowd of 5,000 crammed into a ramshackle sports hall which had been converted into a pole vault arena for the day.