|
ZURICH – While Yelena Isinbayeva has become accustomed to world record speculation each time she enters a competition, the same may soon be true for Blanka Vlasic, the recently crowned world high jump champion.
Isinbayeva arrives in Zurich as one of three –along with Americans Michelle Perry and Sanya Richards—still alive in the $1 million IAAF Golden League Jackpot chase. Vlasic, whose only loss of the season in 14 starts came at the Golden League opener in Oslo, doesn’t have that weight on her shoulders --or any burden in particular after finally claiming an elusive major title.
“I was very happy that I was able to handle the pressure of being favorite in Osaka,” the 23-year-old said after her 2.05 clearance won the first ever gold medal for Croatia. With that pressure behind her, now her assault on Stefka Kostadinova’s 2.09 world record, one which has stood for 20 years, can continue.
She’s already taken 15 stabs at 2.10 in competition –what heights she’s cleared in training she’s not telling—and says that the once seemingly impossibly high standard is no longer a barrier psychologically. But she’s in no rush either, hoping that the record comes with her increased consistency, “To know I really earned it,” she said. “To jump it once and be lucky and never jumping it again, that’s not my goal.
Zurich will reunite not only the entire Osaka podium --Russian Anna Chicherova and Italy's Antonietta DiMartino—but each of the top-eight finishers.
Meanwhile, Isinbayeva clearly illustrated two things in Osaka: the first, that she remains for the moment with peer in her event, and the second, that she is once again threatening her own world record of 5.01 set two years ago in Helsinki.
“I have five competitions left,” she said –after Zurich, comes Brussels, Berlin, the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart and a return engagement in Shanghai--, “And I want to win them all and try to break my world record.”
In Zurich, she'll face Osaka silver and bronze medallists Katerina Badurova of the Czech Republic and Russian compatriot Svetlana Feofanova, who each cleared 4.75. For the Czech, it was a national record.
In other field events action, world pole vault champion Brad Walker takes on German Danny Ecker and Russian Igor Pavlov, third and fourth respectively in Osaka; Portugal’s Nelson Evora leads a triple jump podium reunion with Brazil’s Jadel Gergorio and American Walter Davis; as does Finn Tero Pitkamaki in the javelin, where Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway and American Breaux Greer, the silver and bronze medalists in Osaka, will compete as well.
Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest
| 
Know someone else who's interested in running and triathlon?