Athletics: Feofanova faces fight for pole position

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There is not very much of Svetlana Feofanova. The Muscovite measures just 5ft 4in. She has a head for heights, though – and a head for figures too.

Three times in the past fortnight (three times within the space of eight days in fact), the 21-year-old Russian has taken the world indoor pole vault record for women to a new height. In doing so by 1cm at a time – clearing 4.71 metres in Stuttgart on 3 February, 4.72m in Stockholm three days later and 4.73m in Ghent last Sunday – she has built up her bank balance and her reputation in the calculating manner of Sergei Bubka, the ultimate high-flying businessman of track and field.

Already £76,687 to the good this month in meeting bonuses alone, Feofanova will head back to Moscow with another cheque for £30,674 if she makes it over the 4.74m mark at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham tomorrow afternoon. She is certainly confident of hitting the jackpot in the feature event of the Norwich Union Grand Prix meeting.

"I still think there is more to come," Feofanova said, as she looked forward to the British leg of her European winter circuit tour. "How much, I don't know. But one of my goals for the future is to raise the world record to 5m." That has long been the goal of Stacy Dragila too, though the battle for the new frontier in women's pole vaulting has suddenly developed into a latter day US-Russian race.

Dragila managed to hold on to her world title when the feisty Feofanova fought an epic duel with her in Edmonton last summer, the 30-year-old Californian prevailing by virtue of the countback system after both women had cleared 4.75m. Dragila, though, has lost her indoor record to the rising Russian, and her outdoor world record, 4.81m, no longer looks like hers alone to break.

It was only in November that Dragila was sitting alongside Prince Albert in Monaco being lauded as the International Association of Athletics Federation's world female athlete of the year. Three months on, she is being eclipsed, one centimetre at a time, by the world athlete of the 2002 indoor season.

Dragila, winner of the first Olympic women's pole vault contest in Sydney two years ago, lost to Feofanova in Stockholm 10 days ago, struggling to negotiate 4.47m. Then, last Sunday, she was stuck in her Belgian sick bed, suffering from flu, while her rival soared over 4.73m in the Flanders Indoor Arena in Ghent.

Dragila, however, will be back in action in Birmingham tomorrow, and the American star is determined to regain her stripes. "It is strange not to be the world indoor record holder," she said, "but it has given me new enthusiasm to get it back. It has given me a charge to the system.

"I knew it would be a tough battle, this indoor season, that Svetlana would be in top form. She is fit right now. She is running fast, vaulting well, and she is having fun.

"There is a lot of money at stake, a lot of bonuses, and Svetlana knows if she is going to break the record centimetre by centimetre then it will pay off for her. But it is a gamble, because if she had increased it by 5cm-6cm it would be much harder for me to get it back.

"Sergei Bubka used to do it that way, increasing his records by small margins, but there was such a huge gap between him and the other competitors that whatever he did no-one else would come close to it. It is good for the sport and for the event, though. It's healthy that I have some real competition now." It's certainly healthy for women's pole vaulting, which in six years of officially recognised competition has come a long way towards catching up with the 159-year history of the event. Vaulting for height rather than distance dates back to 1843, to the upwardly mobile members of the football and cricket club in Ulverston, the Cumbrian town that was also the birthplace of Stan Laurel. Dragila and Feofanova have already risen well above the heights achieved by Bob Richards, or the Reverend Bob Richards, as "the vaulting vicar" from California was known when he struck Olympic gold in Helsinki in 1952 and in Melbourne in 1956.

In fact, both women have surpassed the 4.70m that won the Olympic title in Rome in 1960 for Don Bragg – or Don 'Tarzan' Bragg, as the American became ironically known after playing the lead role in the filming of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar before a court order halted the production because of copyright infringement.

Dragila happens to conform to the historical tradition of the pole vaulting eccentric, having been a rodeo rider in her tomboy youth. Feofanova has emerged from a more conventional background. Like Daniela Bartova, the former world record holder from Czechoslovakia, and Sonia Lawrence, the current British No 2 from Bedwas in South Wales, she was a gymnast in a previous sporting life.

"I trained as a gymnast in Moscow for 11 years before I tried the pole vault," the Russian explained.

"It was difficult to begin with. I have to say my success has been a little unexpected."

And, little by little, the diminutive Muscovite is making a big name for herself with her vaulting ambition.