11th July 2012 08:53
Isinbayeva, now 30, took her fourth world indoor title earlier this year in Istanbul and will be bidding for her third consecutive Olympic Games gold medal in the coming weeks.
She cleared her winning height on her first attempt in Sotteville lès Rouen before going on to unsuccessfully attempt a world-leading 4.85m.
'I am happy with my victory but I have a huge amount of potential to improve. I still have adjustments to do,' commented the world record holder.
'My pole didn't play in the right way. It's all about small technical things which I'll have a lot of time to sort out before London,' added Isinbayeva.
She missed her first attempt at 4.70m, a height cleared by Great Britain's Holly Bleasdale and Poland's former world champion Anna Rogowska, which eventually gave them second and third respectively.
Isinbayeva then saved her next attempt for 4.75m and although the bar wobbled it stayed on the uprights. She then watched both Bleasdale and Rogowska have three failures at that height.
'I'm so happy that I got the victory, that's the most important, the good results will come later', said Isinbayeva, who competed with a strap around her left thigh. Her one other competition before the Olympics will be at the Samsung Diamond League meeting in Monaco on 20 July.
Two other victories by Russian athletes were earned by the 21-year-old javelin thrower Viktoriya Sudarushkina, who improved her personal best by just over a metre when she threw 60.59m and 800m runner Tatyana Markelova, who displayed a nice turn of speed over the final 50 metres to win in 2:01.07.
They were the only wins by European athletes but there were some good performances by international guests.
US Virgin islands' sprinter Laverne Jones-Ferrette won the 200m in 22.67 with France's Nelly Banco following her home in third place with a personal best of 22.98.
Ethiopia's Zemzem Ahmed won the women's 3000m steeplechase in 9:25.85 but Latvia's former European junior champion Polina Jelizarova was second in a national record of 9:32.71, her third reduction in the mark this summer.
Another good time was posted by the well-known American hurdler Lolo Jones, who ran a season's best of 12.74.
The meeting in Sotteville lès Rouen was the ninth of this summer's 12 European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meetings. The next one will be the 58th Janusz Kusocinski Memorial in Szczecin, Poland, on 21 July.
Details of all the 2012 European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meetings can be found here.