Education
Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University.
Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University.
He has a personal best of 5.90 m and was a finalist at the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 2011 World Championships in Athletics and the 2012 Summer Olympics. Prior to his senior debut, Starodubtsev had much success at competitions in the younger age categories. At the 2003 World Youth Championships in Athletics he cleared a personal best of 5.10 m to take the silver medal behind Argentina"s German Chiaraviglio.
He then went on to claim consecutive gold medals at the 2004 World Junior Championships in Athletics and the 2005 European Athletics Junior Championships.
Later that year he competed outdoors, finishing tenth in the qualifiers at the 2006 European Athletics Championships then ninth at the 2006 IAAF World Cup. He equalled his personal best to make the final at the 2007 European Athletics Indoor Championships, but managed only 5.41 m in the last round to finish sixth overall.
In August that year he set a new best outdoors with a clearance of 5.70 m in Tula. In 2008 he cleared 5.70 m indoors then improved to 5.75 m outdoors at a meeting in Kazan.
This was enough to make the Russian Olympic team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and he reached his first major senior final, finishing in fifth place with a vault of 5.70 m.
He cleared 5.70 m both indoors and outdoors in 2009, but his sole international competition was the 2009 European Athletics Indoor Championships where he failed to reach the final. In 2010 he was sixth at the World Indoor Championships but did not record a valid mark in the final at the European Championships. He was the runner-up at the Russian outdoor championships with a vault of 5.72 m and gained selection for the 2011 World Championships in Athletics.
In his second senior global final, he finished in twelfth place.
At the end of 2011 he showed the results of his improved physical conditioning with two clearances of 5.90 m in Chelyabinsk – a mark which raised him into the top twenty pole vaulters of all time.