Russian pole vault legend Yelena Isinbayeva denied Friday she has criticized her foreign fellow competitors for public support of the sexual minorities.

At least two Swedish female athletes have painted their fingernails in rainbow colors on Thursday at Luzhniki Stadium to show support for gays and lesbians in the face of a new anti-gay law in Russia.

"I respect the opinion of all athletes and want to make it clear that I stand against any discrimination of the gay people," Isinbayeva said in a statement published on the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) website.

She explained her previous remarks that Russians did not want to have "all this staff" (so-called pride parades) in future by poor command of her English.

The controversial law, which bans gay "propaganda," has drawn criticism and led some Western activists to call for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi due in Feb. 2014.

"If we allow to promote and do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people," the two-time Olympic champion said in English on Thursday.

"We just live with boys with woman, woman with boys."

The 31-year-old played back Friday saying that "English is not her native language," so what she really wanted to say was understood incorrectly.

After hearing Isinbayeva's Thursday remarks, some foreign athletes proposed to strip the Russian pole vault jumper off her post of the Youth Olympics Envoy. She holds that post since 2010. Endi

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