Mariya Abakumova looks with surprise and delight at her 70.78m release in Beijing (© Getty Images)
Mariya Abakumova was very much the surprise package of the Beijing Olympic women’s Javelin Throw final. The Russian let fly a short-lived European record of 70.78 metres in the fourth round, which was only pipped for gold by Czech Barbora Spotakova’s last round 71.42 release which further improved the continental mark.
An Olympic silver medal at the age of 22 is quite an achievement, and Abakumova (1.79m; 80kg), who will turn 23-years-old on 15 January, was hardly an automatic convert to the event. Even in her short sports career Abakumova has fluctuated between a number of different sports, and then after her entry to athletics experimented with various disciplines before settling on her present event.
Abakumova started her sporting career in rhythmic gymnastics but she failed to make it big. A tall well-muscled girl, she was advised by coaches that she lacked the necessary amount of grace to make a major impact, and so she turned to swimming, but got disappointed as the training sessions were so long and she found them so boring. Next she even gave boxing a brief try. Finally Abakumova took what seemed the natural family choice, athletics. Her father had been a sprinter and her mother liked nearly all athletic disciplines. They were not well-known athletes but still the parents set an example.
The Pentathlon was Abakumova’s embarkation point. She liked the 100m Hurdles and enjoyed the Shot Put, but she felt really exhausted when she had to run the 800m. According to Abakumova it was “real torture”.
Time for another change
So Abakumova next tried her luck in the sprint hurdles. But she attacked the hurdles so aggressively that it was as if she was assaulting her worst enemy every time she ran, sometimes she even hit them with such force she even broke the barrier!
A lack of finesse had brought her gymnastic career to an end and in the end it also put paid to her hurdling escapade too, as during a training session in 1998 she crashed through a hurdle injuring her leg so gravely and painfully that the doctors advised her not to resume running hurdles.
Abakumova was only 12-years-old at the time the accident took place. With three previous sports and various Athletics disciplines already sampled it had been to say the least a very active early childhood for the young Russian.
But Abakumova wasn't about to sit still about doing nothing, and she next chose the Javelin Throw.
Why such a choice?
Abakumova’s hurdles coach Irina Komarova had not been bad in the Javelin Throw in her own youth and believed Abakumova's height and strength would make her pupil a good candidate for the discipline too.
On the 14 September 2002 in Sochi, after just four years of training, Abakumova set her first national record in the Javelin Throw, in the Youth category. And in the next 6 years she bettered the national records in all age groups: juniors in 2005 with 59.53m, then under 23 and senior in 2008 with 70.78m. As well as securing the silver medal in Beijing Olympics, her seventy metre throw bettered the European U23 record and made her the third furthest thrower of all-time.
Abakumova made a sensational breakthrough in 2008. Having entered the year with a career best of 64.28m (2007), she improved her personal best to 65.71m when winning the national title in Kazan on 19 July, and then took the national senior record with a 67.25m effort at a competition staged for the Russian Olympic team at their pre-Beijing training base in Irkutsk on 2 August.
“I was living with the Olympic dream the whole year,” admits Abakumova now. “I was ready to withstand the tough fight. But practically the struggle only came in the first and in the last efforts of the final. And between them it was like I was sitting on a fire. I was struggling but only with myself. I failed to relax.”
“I improved my personal best by more then 3 metres at the Bird's Nest and if the rivalry had been more persistent (throughout each round of the final) I could have thrown the javelin even further.”
“I didn't know what to expect from my main opponent. But believe me that very day I was amazingly consistent. I was overfilled with energy. You won't believe me but everything (electrical) I touched stopped working that day. I used a lap top and it went ‘out of order’. I took the mobile phone from the hands of a friend, and it also went ‘out of order’.”
A very personal relationship
Russia’s pole vaulting queen Yelena Isinbayeva famously talks to her pole before each jump, and likewise Abakumova has a special attitude towards the javelin implement. She considers it to be an extremely special, spiritual, piece of athletics equipment with which the athlete must form a relationship. Sometimes the javelin can be capricious and sometimes it can be friendly!
There are moments when the javelin can fly in the air with a sudden ease like a bullet, and as a result the effort maybe 10 metres better then expected when it lands. The athlete must “catch the breath of the javelin” explains Abakumova, and in order to make friends with it the thrower should work persistently and hard.
“And I did work hard for years and years. In the last two years I had a feeling that I should be doing much better than I was doing, but there were always some circumstances that prevented me from showing my real best. And only at the Olympics did that premonition, that feeling, turn into reality.”
Boom years ahead
What Abakumova lacks is experience. She only started to participate in major competitions rather recently.
She made her international debut in 2003 when she finished 4th at the World Youth Championships, the following year she was a non-qualifier at the World Juniors in Grossetto, but gained her first major international victory at the age of 19 in 2005 at the European Junior Championships in Kaunas. She then made the Osaka World Championships final in 2007 finishing seventh.
In 2006, Abakumova left her native city of Stavropol where she lived for 20 years and moved to another southern Russian city of Krasnodar. Her coach now is a well-known specialist Aleksandr Sinitzyn who has brought up and guided the fortunes of a lot of throwers.
After the Beijing Olympics Abakumova proved that her success in China had not been a one-off. In September she took part and won three competitions, and in the first two tournaments in Lausanne and in Jablontz defeated Spotakova.
Abakumova is now back studying at University, her subject being international financial credits. The 22-year-old certainly worked a near miracle on the runway in Beijing, now perhaps she can do the same in the wider world of business and find a solution to the current financial crisis!
Whatever the results of any future career Abakumova still has plenty more to achieve in the athletics world. We are most likely on the brink of many boom years for the young Russian thrower. Who knows she might already achieve the gold standard next summer in Berlin?
Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov for the IAAF
