A month ago, Allison Stokke was an ordinary sixth-former with a special talent: pole vaulting.

A two-time California state champion and national record-holder, she was serious about her chosen sport, which had earned her a university scholarship. But then she made the “mistake” of posting a three-minute interview about her technique on the internet video site YouTube.

Within days, pictures of her, innocently taken at a track-and-field event, were on the internet and being leered at by tens of thousands of men all over the world on websites that have nothing to do with sport.

The attention has become so great that Miss Stokke, 18, now locks the doors and avoids leaving her house alone. Her father, a lawyer, checks the internet every night for potential stalkers. She has even had to enlist the services of a media adviser to fend off hundreds of requests for photographs and interviews.

Her unwanted fame as an internet sex symbol can be traced to a fan who posted a photograph of the athlete stroking her brunette ponytail with her pole resting on her shoulder on an online message board about American football. The picture was e-mailed by a reader to Matt Ufford, a New York sports blogger, who posted it on his site, WithLeather.com, under the headline: “Pole Vaulting is Sexy, Barely Legal.”

After watching the YouTube interview, he quipped: “She takes pole vaulting so seriously that she’s unable to detect sarcasm. Which is too bad, because missing sarcastic remarks ends our steamy, illicit romance before it’s even begun. That, and the age difference. And the restraining order.”

Now, internet fans ogle her as though she were a magazine pin-up and trade sexual innuendo about her chosen sport. “Allison is a pole vault champion who would look perfectly comfortable doing pole dance instead,” one blogger wrote.

Miss Stokke’s internet celebrity has spawned an unofficial fan page at www.allisonstokke.com and rival fan groups on Myspace.com and the Manchester United supporters’ network RedCafe.net.

The YouTube interview in which she discusses her pole vaulting technique has been viewed 160,000 times. “I just try to stay relaxed the whole time,” she explains in the clip.

The sixth-former at Newport Harbour High School in Newport Beach has received dozens of requests for photo-shoots from as far afield as Brazil, and photographers have been flocking to her athletics meetings.

Miss Stokke was a childhood gymnast until she switched to pole vaulting, following a friend. She soon won the California state pole vaulting title for her age group and broke five national records, earning a scholarship to the University of California-Berkeley.

Two years ago, she broke her right leg when she fell into the concrete box where she plants the pole. She made a comeback with two pins in her leg.

Her internet fame dates back to the beginning of this month, when friends alerted her that her image was plastered across the worldwide web. The Yahoo! Buzz Log, which tracks trends in internet searches, noted shortly afterwards that internet requests for “Allison Stokke” were soaring.

“This semi-underground phenom isn’t a big name . . . yet. However, with interested dudes accounting for 95 per cent of the interest in the young beauty, it’s only a matter of time before she breaks out on a bigger scale,” the Buzz Log predicted.

It was accurate. Yesterday, she was featured in the Washington Post. “Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning,” Ms Stokke told the newspaper. “I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it’s almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me.”

Mr Ufford has since removed the much-downloaded picture because of objections from the photographer who took it at a track-and-field meeting. But rival fan clubs are scouring the internet for more. “The first one to get one of her naked wins my permanent membership,” an internet poster called Retirantmobs wrote.

Accidental attention

Ghyslain Raza, a 14-year-old Quebec schoolboy, unwittingly became a global celebrity when friends posted footage of him wielding an imaginary light-sabre. He received counselling after the video was viewed by more than 900 million people

Chinese “netizens” turned Qian Zhijun, a portly Chinese man aged 19, into a worldwide phenomen by superimposing his face on to film characters Lucy Gao, an Oxford University undergraduate, was lampooned after her birthday invitation was forwarded to millions of people. It contained advice such as: “When asked, ‘How can I help you, Sir/Madam?’, you reply: “I am here for Lucy’s birthday party at the Rivoli Bar’”

Melissa Theuriau, a little-known French newsreader, achieved millions of hits from male admirers on YouTube. Ms Theuriau complained that her talent as a broadcaster had been overlooked

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