Pole vault great Bubka a big fan of Isinbayeva

Sergei Bubka thinks the sky's the limit for women star pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, who has carved a career similar to the Ukrainian great in his heyday.

Bubka, who broke the men's world outdoor record 35 times and is considered the greatest pole vaulter of all time, thinks the 23-year-old Russian has the potential to stay at the top of her game and continue breaking world records.

She currently holds the world record at 5.01 metres achieved last month at the World Championships in Helsinki.

'She's a great athlete and she has been performing very well. I believe she has a very big potential for the future,' said Bubka, 41, who is in town to attend the athletes' summit. 'She is developing women's pole vault like no other and she could be the greatest in her event. She's very good and very dedicated. She has a big passion for sports.' Bubka is the first athlete to have cleared 6.10m and still holds the world record of 6.14m set in Sestriere, Italy in 1994.

And the man who was the Soviet Union's best sportsman of the year for three years in a row from 1984 to 1986, said he was a great admirer of Isinbayeva.

'She has excellent technique and she has the ability to perform much better than others. There are a lot of similarities between me and her. Her technique is exactly the same as mine. This is one of the reasons why she is better than her competitors,' he said.

When Bubka was a competitor, he developed what was called as the Bubka/Petrov model after his coach Vitaly Petrov helped him perfect the technique that made him the biggest star in the sport.