The LONDON TIMES has an epic piece on Yelena Isinbayeva, the current world record holder in the pole vault and recently named World Athlete of the Year.

(Isinbayeva (l) is hot, but doesn’t stack up to Alenka Bikar)

Apparently Ms. Isinbayeva hasn’t endeared herself to her competitors over the years with her standoff attitude and candor about their looks. Excerpt:

She is the self-styled beauty of athletics, a Volgograd vixen who says that she is happy if her rivals call her a harpy or a bitch while she bestrides centre stage as the sport’s ultimate drama queen.

It’s a shame we haven’t heard (and seen) more from her until now. But with track now off the map in the American sports psyche (even in an Olympic year), we’ll have to settle for some of her delicious comments in the Times piece - and millions of tribute videos on Youtube.

“Every girl on the track has a duty to be nice-looking and womanly,” she said. “I remember a very famous athlete said that we had to be athletes or women. I don’t agree. Why do we have to be an athlete and have a man’s body and be ugly? Why can we only be beautiful outside sport?”

In other words, she’s saying her opponents are bootleg-looking. And of course, she’s absolutely right. More:

When I went to the Sydney Olympics [in 2000] I felt like an ugly duckling, like a stick insect. I was out of place. Now I try to be beautiful. On the track we are the centre of attention. If we are ugly then nobody will be interested. They wouldn’t listen to the result, they would just say: ‘Uggh, she is so horrible.’” 

From a very close inspection of Isinbayeva’s videos and photos, the irony is she isn’t all that pretty either. And though she has some rather phenomenal fleshy hindquarters, her a$$ isn’t even the best on the track.

But in comparison to some of her current opponents, Isinbayeva is Salma Hayek.

So now we had to go all the way to Russia to get the truth about what makes women’s athletics interesting. Honestly, wouldn’t you rather watch a hottie finish fifth than endure observing a facial-haired female winning the gold?

I have no interest in the LPGA, but if I see Natalie Gulbis on the tee box, I’m watching.

It’s a cultural thing. Just like pro soccer will never work in the U.S.A., the NHL will never work in Arizona or Nashville, unattractive female athletes will never truly be popular in the mainstream.

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