Yelena Slesarenko Net Worth

Background and career

Yelena Vladimirovna Slesarenko, née Sivushenko (Russian: Елена Владимировна Слесаренко; born February 28, 1982, in Volgograd) is a Russian high jumper.

In 2004 she cleared 2.04 metres to win the World Indoor Championships. Outdoors that year she won the SPAR European Cup with the same height. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, she won the gold medal with a new national record 2.06 metres, beating the previous Olympic record, set by Stefka Kostadinova in 1996. She finished the season by winning the World Athletics Final.

Injuries kept her away from most of the 2005 season, including the 2005 World Championships.

In 2006 she won the World Indoor Championships with 2.02 metres. She finished fifth in the 2006 European Athletics Championships, failing to clear 2.00 m.

At the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Slesarenko finished fourth in the women's high jump with a jump of 2.01 meters. However, in 2016 both she and her compatriot, bronze-medalist Anna Chicherova, were disqualified from this event after failing a retest of drug samples from Beijing.

Slesarenko retired in 2014. I 2022 she was disqualified for doping and her results were cancelled from 2008 onward, although she retained her 2004 Olympic gold medal. She later became a director of a winter sports academy in Volgograd, her home city.