By Mike Rowbottom

Yelena Isinbayeva_world_record_Stockholm_February_23_2012March 18 - Yelena Isinbayeva (pictured), who set an indoor pole vault record of 5.01m last month and Polish 800 metres runner Adam Kszczot, who ran the fastest indoor time by a European in almost a decade, have been named European Athletes of the Month for February.


The 29-year-old double Olympic champion set her latest record at the XL Galan indoor meeting in Stockholm, Sweden on February 23, beating the previous mark of 5m that she set in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk in February 2009.

It was the Russian's 28th world record, indoors or outdoors – 13 of which have come under cover.

Kszczot, the 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships and European Athletics Under-23 Championships 800m gold medallist, fulfilled his ambition of getting the Polish indoor 800m record when he ran 1min 44.57sec at the Meeting Pas de Calais Trophée Caisse d'Epargne in the French town of Liévin on February 14.

It was the fastest indoor 800m by a European for nine years and moved him up to third on the world and European all-time list with only Denmark's Wilson Kipketer and Russia's Yuriy Borzakovskiy having run faster.

British multi-events star Jessica Ennis ran what was then the fastest time in the world this year over the 60m hurdles with 7.87sec at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham, England on February 18 and was voted second in the women's poll.

Ennis was followed by Russia's high jump world champion Anna Chicherova, who set a national indoor record of 2.06m in the German town of Arnstadt on February 4.

Adam Kszczot2_March18
Her mark remains the highest jump in the world this season.

In the men's poll, current European pole vault champion, indoors and outdoors, Renaud Lavillenie cleared a world-leading height of 5.93m in the French town of Nevers on February 18 and was voted second.

He subsequently improved the world-leading jump to 5.95m in March.

Turkey's Ilham Tanui Özbilen, who ran a European-leading 1500m time of 3:34.76, which was also a national record, to move to sixth fastest on the European all-time list in Karlsruhe on February 12, was voted third.

European Athletics' monthly poll, launched in January 2007, is based on votes by the public, media and a panel of European Athletics experts – each counting for 33.3 percent of the final vote.

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