Elena Isinbaeva, Russia’s queen of pole vaulting, has revealed she is planning to call it quits on her breathtaking career, but not before 2013.
However, the two-time Olympic champion says she has enough talent and ability to compete even harder before hanging up her Nikes, Isinbaeva said in Bejing where she signed a sponsorship contract with sportswear line Li Ning.
The Russian sportswoman said that in the upcoming years she’ll try to substantially beat the current world’s record. She believes she will be able to reach 5.2 or 5.3 meters, but a lot will depend on her health and fitness to compete.
This year, Moscow holds the summer World Track and Field Championship, which is going to be the last large-scale tournament Isinbaeva will compete in. She said that in 2009 she’s also planning to take part in the World Championship in Berlin and will participate in the Summer Olympic games in 2012 hosted by London.
Isinbaeva is 26 now and has broken that same number of world records, so far, the latest of them coming just a fortnight ago when she cleared five meters at an indoors event in Donetsk, Ukraine.