http://www.iaaf.org/GLE07/news/Kind=2/newsId=39615.html
Russia vs USA high in the sky
Isinbayeva, formerly twice World Athlete of the Year, and clutching onto every major championship and record superlative associated with the women’s Pole Vault, faces arguably her greatest challenge since she came to the top of the event.
In Rome she meets USA record holder Jenn Stuczynski who this season has tied herself as the second equal highest women’s vaulter of all-time at 4.88m. It is meant as no disrespect to the co-holder of that distinction Russian Svetlana Feofanova that her presence here in Rome isn’t making the same waves. It is just the reality that Stuczynski is by comparison the new kid on the block.
Feofanova, 26, former World and European champion and World recordholder, has never been able to affectively challenge her one year younger compatriot since Isinbayeva’s competitive coup d'état which, begun in 2003 with an outdoor World record, was completed in 2004 with World Indoor Championship and Olympic titles.
The focus in Rome is on the American who is an ex-basketball player because while like Isinbayeva she is 25-years-old, Stuczynski only made a breakthrough in the winter of 2005.
The interest is centred on a number of questions - can the previously peerless Isinbayeva be seriously challenged? The Russian looked back in the groove in Paris with a 4.91m world season lead but is her form currently enough to stave off the American’s challenge? And of course is Stuczynski ‘the real deal’ as her compatriots might put it?
40,000 pairs of eyes will be drawn to the runway tomorrow night in Rome to discover the answers.