Possibly I was a little quick on the trigger with my earlier reply, since I failed to fully grasp the gist of the German article when I ran it through Babelfish. However ...
On 18 Jan 2006 Спорт-Экспресс (Sport-Express) wrote:Italy proposes 6 million for Isinbayeva to change her citizenship The German publication "Zudeutche Zeitung" reports that Italy has made a tempting proposal to Yelena Isinbayeva. The Russian polevault champion will receive six million dollars if she will take Italian citizenship. "Zudeutche Zeitung" proposes that the All-Russian Federation for Light Athletics require a written statement from the Russian sportswoman that in the future she will continue to represent only the team of Russia, according to RIA Novosti.
Should she change her citizenship, Yelena Isinbayeva, honored in 2005 with the title of best athlete in the world and Europe, would be forced not to participate in official competitions for three years. And this means that in 2007 she would not be able to defend her title of World Champion, and she would also be forced to forego participation in the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing.
In November the sportswoman from Volgograd split with her previous trainer, Yevgeny Trofimov, who discovered the world sport star eight years ago. The present trainer of Isinbayeva, living in Donetsk (Ukraine), is Sergey Bubka.
On 18 February Isinbayeva plans to participate in the competitions in Birmingham. For the establishment of a world record the organizers offer 30 000 dollars. If Isinbayeva succeeds in establishing a sequential world record in Birmingham, then she will also automatically beat the record for prize payments earned in competitions by Tumann Albion. So far Isinbayeva has earned 280 thousand dollars from Great Britain.
How is it that the same publication can print a long interview about her "historic" partnership with Petrov, then less than three weeks later say she's being trained by Bubka? Some editor was asleep at the switch.
Anyhow, I still think it's unlikely that she'll bail on Russia, even for $6M, though she's crossed me up before.
[Edit: Here's another English language article on the subject ...
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/01/18/bubkavyubke.shtml]