An athletics quiz: when is a world record not a personal best?
The answer is: in the pole vault, very often.
At the recently-completed world athletic championships in Helsinki, Russian superstar Yelena Isinbayeva broke the world record in the women's pole vault, jumping 5.01 metres.
Breaking the world record is nothing new to Isinbayeva, of course. Here's a list (source) of her world-record outdoor vaults:
Table 1 — Yelena Isinbayeva's World Record Vaults (Outdoors)
| Date | Record Vault | Previous Record |
|---|
| 4.82 m | 4.81 m |
| 4.87 m | 4.83 m |
| 4.89 m | 4.88 m |
| 4.90 m | 4.89 m |
| 4.91 m | 4.90 m |
| 4.92 m | 4.91 m |
| 4.93 m | 4.92 m |
| 4.95 m | 4.93 m |
| 5.00 m | 4.95 m |
| 5.01 m | 5.00 m |
As you would expect from such a dominant performer, Isinbayeva also holds the indoor world record in the pole vault at 4.89 metres. She's been making the same kind of progress there (source):
Table 2 — Yelena Isinbayeva's World Record Vaults (Indoors)
| Date | Record Vault | Previous Record |
|---|
| 4.83 m | 4.81 m |
| 4.86 m | 4.85 m |
| 4.87 m | 4.86 m |
| 4.88 m | 4.87 m |
| 4.89 m | 4.88 m |
| 4.90 m | 4.89 m |
You don't have to be an expert to see that Isinbayeva is only toying with the world record. This past winter she broke the world indoor record four times in as many weekends, each time by exactly one centimetre. She's held the outdoor record for about a year, and has raised the record by 12 cm in eight very small steps. The only way you can break the world record with this kind of regularity is if you are still well below your maximum capacity.
So why would an athlete do that? Since she had already secured the world championship, why didn't Isinbayeva ask for the bar to be set at 5.15 in her final attempt in Helsinki, so that she could have a true test of her ability? The answer is very simple: breaking the world record is worth a lot of money for Yelena Isinbayeva.
In addition to $60,000 for winning the competition, Isinbayeva earned $100,000 from the IAAF and its sponsors for breaking the world record. This BBC story claims that Isinbayeva earns $100K every time she breaks the world record, presumably from Russia. I think that this claim is probably incorrect, but there is no doubt that the incentives are considerable. Many of the top European meets offer cash prizes in the tens of thousands of dollars for world records, to encourage the athletes to give their best efforts and to add to the excitement of the competition.
Olympic champion Tim Mack suggests that "she’s probably jumping 5.20 in practice." If that's a reasonable estimate, then she might have 19 more world outdoor records, and perhaps a similar number of indoor records, even if she doesn't improve at all. That adds up to a lot of money. It's no wonder she chooses to set each new record by the smallest possible margin.
The pole vault and the high jump are both susceptible to this kind of world record manipulation for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, the score is determined not by the height of the jump but by the height of the bar. This gives competitors extremely precise control of their results. Second, the competition proceeds by multiple attempts and a process of elimination. This means that a dominant performer can wait until all of his or her competitors are defeated before attempting the world record; there is then no danger that any other competitor will break the record, and therefore no reason to push it out of reach.
I don't mean to denigrate Isinbayeva in any way. She is clearly the best female pole vaulter the world has ever seen, and her accomplishments are unlikely to be matched any time soon. But I would like to see a world record that truly reflects her abilities, and we aren't seeing that right now.
One way to make the records more "honest" is to have tougher competition. The only reason Isinbayeva (and Sergei Bubka before her) can get away with this strategy is that she is head and shoulders above the rest of the field. If she had a real rival, then both of them would be forced to compete at their limits.
That's not really a solution that the IAAF can implement, though. Another idea would be to change the world record incentives for these events. For example, the incentive could scale according to the margin of the record-breaking attempt (e.g., pay ten times more for a ten-centimetre break than for a one-centimetre break). Another idea would be to offer the bonus only for certain milestones reached (5.10 m, 5.20 m, and so on).
