With Elusive title in hand, Soboleva breaks the 'deadlock'

Yelena Soboleva with her world indoor 1500m record figures (Getty Images)

Valencia, Spain - For Yelena Soboleva, tonight's 1500m World record came only as a bonus.

The 25-year-old Russian revealed that she only thought about the gold medal and not about the record when she stormed to a superb 1500m victory in Valencia. But with a new all-time best indoors of 3:57.71 she crowned the final day of the IAAF World Indoor Championships.

“I did not expect to break the World record," Soboleva said. "I was running for gold."

It was the third time that Soboleva lowered the World indoor 1500m standard. Two years ago she had improved on the pre-Soboleva best of 3:59.98 to 3:58.28 in Moscow. This year she lowered it yet again at the Russian Championships in the capital, to 3:58.05.

But in contrast to her two World records previous to Valencia Soboleva had never won a major championship. Two years ago she had entered the World Indoors in Moscow as the big favourite but was then beaten by her fellow countrywoman Yuliya Chizhenko. After that silver medal it becmae even worse at the European Chamionships final in Gothenburg later that year. In Sweden she could only finish fourth after she had improved her outdoor best to 3:56.43. Last year it was a similar story, although she at least won a silver medal in Osaka. Soboleva had entered the event leading the world lists with 3:57.30 which remained the fastest time of the year. But then she could not cope in the end of the race when Bahrain’s Maryam Jamal stormed past her to take the gold.