Legends of Sports

10. Yelena Isinbayeva (Pole Vault)

Apart from being smoking hot, Yelena Isinbayeva is also the best female pole vaulter currently competing, and has set 20 world records, 9 of them in 2005 alone. She is virtually unbeaten since the Olympic Games of 2004.

Though Emma George arguably revolutionised female pole vaulting in the latter half of the 90s, increasing the world record from 4.23m to 4.60m in less than four years, Isinbayeva took the sport to new heights in July 2005, when she became the first woman to pass 5m, increasing that to 5.01m in August of that year.

Here is Isinbayeva passing 5m for the first time.

9. Uwe Hohn (Javelin)

It’s rare that a world record is too good, but that’s what Uwe Hohn’s astonishing throw of 104.80m was. On a windy day in 1984, Hohn became the first man to throw the javelin more than 100m. The javelin barely landed inside the field and prompted the IAAF to redesign the javelin to purposefully under-perform. The record statistics were restarted, thus Hohn’s throw became an ‘eternal world record’.

The world record for the current javelin design is 98.48 by Jan Zelezny, set in 1996.

8. Florence Griffith-Joyner (100m)

Florence Griffith-Joyner was an American sprinter who won 3 gold medals in the 1988 Olympic Games (100m, 200m, 4x100m relay).

She stunned the world when, known as a 200m runner, she ran a new 100m world record of 10.49 in the quarter-finals of the US Olympic Trials. She had run 10.60 earlier in the day, which would have counted as a world record, were it not wind aided.

She shattered the world record by an incredible 0.17 seconds, on a windspeed of exactly zero, making it one of the most phenomenal achievements in athletics history.
Her career was dogged by allegations of drugs use, which only intensified after her premature death at the age of 38.

She was the sister-in-law of heptathlon world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee and the wife of Olympic gold medal winning triple jumper, Al Joyner.

She also holds the current 200m world record at 21.34, set in September 1988.


7. Sergei Bubka Pole (Vault)


Sergei Bubka broke the pole vault world record 35 times during his long career. He became the first man to clear 6m, and remains the only one to clear 6.10m. He set the world record of 6.14 in 1994, and officially retired in 2001.


6. Roman Sebrle (Decathlon)

As a youngster, Roman Sebrle struggled with which athletic sport to pursue – so he decided to pursue them all. He became the first person to score over 9000 points in the decathlon, with a world record of 9026, in 2001.

Excelling particularly in the javelin and high jump, it was the former that almost ended his career in January 2007 when a stray javelin thrown from 55m pierced his right shoulder while he was resting, entering 12cm deep into his arm. He pulled it out immediately and was lucky not to be more hurt. He recovered from this injury to win the World Championships in Osaka later that year, attaining a personal best in – you guessed it – the javelin.