ATHENS, 24 February 2004 — Russia’s Svetlana Feofanova reclaimed her women’s indoor pole vault world record on Sunday, clearing 4.85 meters at the Athens 2004 IAAF permit meeting.
Feofanova made the jump at the first attempt to eclipse the mark of 4.83 meters set in Donetsk a week ago by her compatriot Yelena Isinbayeva, who was also taking part in Athens.
Feofanova had held the previous record of 4.80 meters, which she achieved at last year’s world indoor championships in Birmingham, England.
“Something was making it difficult for me to gather my strength, but today I am very pleased because at last I have managed to do this jump,” Feofanova said through an interpreter.
Isinbayeva finished second with a jump of 4.50 meters, with Iceland’s Edda Elisdottir third after clearing the same height. Isinbayeva holds the world outdoor record with a vault of 4.82 meters set at Gateshead, England last July.
Cheating Athletes Likely to Line Up for Gene Jabs
In Seattle, Washington, cheating athletes will soon be using gene transplants to boost their performances, according to a scientist who says he has used the method to increase the strength of mice.
An insulin-like growth factor was delivered by a virus into the skeletal muscles of the animals, resulting in supermice. The World Anti-Doping Agency has begun research on how to detect the use of gene therapy.
But “long before” the technology to detect it has been perfected, it is likely that sportsmen will be trying out this next generation of performance enhancement, according to a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February.
Genetic enhancement of muscles could potentially benefit elite athletes, patients rehabilitating from muscle wasting, and elderly people who are limited by muscular weakness, Lee Sweeney and his co-authors are to report next month in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Professor Sweeney described to the association’s annual meeting one experiment in which scientists injected a genetically modified virus that contained an IGF-I rat gene into a hind-leg muscle of rats.
The gene increases production of the growth factor IGF-I, which promotes gains in muscle strength and mass.
“The fact that we had seen not only beneficial effects in old animals and animals with muscle disease, but also muscle growth in young sedentary animals, suggested the possibility that such a treatment could lead to genetic enhancement of muscle performance,” he said.
Genetically enhanced rats that worked their way through ladder-climbing, weight-bearing exercise regimes doubled their muscle strength and retained more of their muscles after working out than exercise-only and genetic-enhancement-only rats.
Even without any training, the injections gave a 15- to 30-percent strength increase. “The prospects are especially high that muscle-directed gene transfer will be used by the athletic community for performance enhancement, just as many drugs are used and abused today,” said Sweeney.
Richard Pound, from the World Anti-Doping Agency and McGill University, said research on how to detect gene therapy had already started.
“I am worried about the potential,” he said.
Korchemny Banned by Schools After Steroid Charges
In San Jose, California, Remy Korchemny, a 71-year-old athletics coach facing charges from a steroid probe into BALCO laboratories, has been banned from two schools where he had been coaching, a newspaper reported.
The San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday that the Ukranian immigrant was banned last week from James Logan High School in nearby Union City, where he coached for 15 years.
Korchemny was escorted off the Chabot College campus in nearby Hayward by a security guard and dropped as an assistant coach for the US team at next month’s World Indoor Championships at Budapest, the newspaper reported.
Korchemny was among four men indicted on charges of distributing banned substances, including Victor Conte and James Valente, the top executives at BALCO, the alleged source of the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).
Also indicted was Greg Anderson, the trainer for Major League Baseball star Barry Bonds. The four men have a court date Friday in the case, which could play out during the baseball season and while Americans are involved in Olympic qualifying for competition next August in Athens.
Lee Webb, the Logan High School athletics coach, said the hardest thing he has had to do as a coach was tell Korchemny he was banned from associating with the team.
“Remi isn’t taking this very well. He doesn’t say very much. He just keeps it inside,” Webb told the Mercury News. “I don’t understand why they’re grouping him with these other people.
