Brown out to leap into European spotlight

ATHLETICS NEWS:THEY SAY there's no money in athletics anymore, but that's not strictly true about the women's pole vault. In fact, the richest athlete on the planet right now is not Usain Bolt or Haile Gebrselassie, but Elena Isinbayeva, who on Monday signed a contract with Chinese sportswear company Li Ning for an estimated €2 million a year.

It’s a five-year deal, unprecedented for a track and field athlete, and what made it extra appealing for Isinbayeva is that it includes a juicy world record bonus.

Considering she’s broken the pole vault record 26 times already, collecting huge money along the way, Isinbayeva will be a very wealthy woman when she retires in 2013 – as she claimed when she signed with Li Ning.

“I will be old then,” said the 26-year-old Russian, who has two Olympic titles, and reckons the 2013 World Championships, in front of a home crowd in Moscow, will be the perfect swansong.

As far as her competitors are concerned, Isinbayeva can’t retire soon enough, yet her earning status is just one indication of how far the women’s pole vault has come since the IAAF recognised it as a competitive event in 1992.

Now, for the first time, Ireland has got in on the act. Zoe Brown has gone on her own record-breaking spree recently, improving the Irish indoor pole vault record at three consecutive meetings. And this weekend she will become the first Irish representative in the event at the European Indoor championships in Turin.

At 25, Brown had been progressing steadily, but surprised even herself last month with her series of record vaults – starting with 4.0 metres to win the Irish Indoors in Belfast, then 4.05 to take third in the British Indoors, and finally 4.20 to win the Celtic Cup in Cardiff last Sunday week.

She’s still some ways off Isinbayeva’s heights – who last month cleared 5.0 metres indoors, and has cleared 5.05 outdoors – but then 13 years ago, when the event first became popular, Brown’s 4.20 would have equalled the world record.

Brown shares one thing in common with Isinbayeva: she started out as a gymnast.

“As it happened, there was a pole vault coach in our school. I met up with him one day in the gym and he suggested that I might try the pole vault. I liked it immediately. I’ve been at it ever since and it just went from there.

“But I suppose I was your typical gymnast in that I could not run to get out of my way, because I feel that most gymnasts have an awkward running style, although they are normally very powerful. And I did a lot of upper body training in the beginning, so that you can hold your own body weight when you are up there hanging on to a pole, which can be four-and-a-half metres up in the air.”

A native of Antrim town, Brown now lives and trains in Dublin, though still under the eye of Belfast coach Jim Alexander. She works with Tennis Ireland, but is giving her event greater attention as the injury problems which had halted her progress have finally disappeared.

“In 2007 things did not go as planned because I had a lot of injury and sickness, including a bout of pneumonia which lasted for six or seven weeks, and that carried on with a bad chest infection which made the year a total write-off. I eventually got back training in September and started a fresh bout of serious training, building up my strength.

“But I don’t like to put limits on myself. There are always ways of making improvements with different aspect of your training, whether it is technical or the physical side of things. And because I’ve had so many injuries it has been difficult for me to get any kind of real consistency.

“So over the last six months it has been a question of getting the technical things right, and now, hopefully, at these Europeans I will have come off a period of physical development that will make be a better all round vaulter.”

Brown claims she’s “not that naturally talented” and instead puts her progress down to commitment and determination. “I would like to break my own Irish record again this weekend. But I know that I’m going to have to jump out of my skin to have a sniff of making the final. So you just go in with an open mind, do your best, and see how it works out.”

But with Isinbayeva skipping the rest of indoor season, competition in Turin should be a more level, and that gives Brown every chance of leaving her mark.