Pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva takes indefinite break

Highlights - Isinbayeva misses out on medal at 2009 World Championships

Double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva is to take an indefinite break from the sport.

In a statement, Russian Isinbayeva, 27, said, "A break from competing is absolutely necessary for me."

She may return in time for the European Championships in Barcelona in July and expects to compete at London 2012.

The world record-holder has struggled this year, missing out on medals at the World Championships last August and at last month's World Indoors.

Nothing has changed with my long term goals which includes the 2011 and 2013 World Championships and the Olympic gold in London Yelena Isinbayeva

"After more than eight years of very hard training and competing at the highest levels both indoors and outdoors each year I need to step back in order for my body to properly recover," Isinbayeva continued.

"It is my full intention to continue training and keep myself fit. At this moment I cannot exactly say when I will return to competitions.

"I have not completely ruled out the entire summer circuit or the European Championships in Barcelona," added the three-time world indoor champion.

"Nothing has changed with my long term goals which includes the 2011 and 2013 World Championships and the Olympic gold in London 2012."

Isinbayeva won gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and a year later became the first woman to clear the five metre mark in Helsinki.

Golds at the 2005 and 2007 World Championships followed before she successfully defended her Olympic crown at the 2008 Beijing Games.

In the same year, she also completed a hat-trick of World Indoor victories in Valenica.

In 2009, she became the first woman to vault over five metres indoors at a meeting in Donetsk, and was named the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year.

At the World Championships in Berlin that year, though, she failed to achieve a successful vault as Pole Anna Rogowska took her crown.

She bounced back from that disappointment by setting a new outdoor world record of 5.06m in Zurich but could only manage 4.45m at the World Indoors in Qatar in March as Brazilian Fabiana Murer took gold.