Defending champion Yelena Slesarenko gets through to the Olympic final after a third-attempt clearance at 1.93m (© Getty Images)
Yesterday (Sun 10) on the last of 11 days of Christmas holidays, Russian athletes were competing in Moscow’s Indoor Sport Arena named after the Brothers Znamenskiy, and even the minus 19 C temperatures outsode couldn't stop the courageous from performing rather well at this traditional competition called “The Christmas Starts”.
The women's High Jump is always popular in Russia and this competition was no exception. Athens Olympic champion Yelena Slesarenko appeared in the jumping sector for the first time under the guidance of her new coach Yevgeniy Zagorulko who has already helped produce three Olympic champions including Beijing men’s winner Andrey Silnov. Slesarenko opened her season clearing a modest 1.87m, and declared that her aim was to win the London Olympics in 2012.
Yulia Golubchikova, the European Indoor Pole Vault champion of last season who took that title in the absence of her main rivals like Isinbayeva and Feofanova, started the new season in winning ways with a clearance of 4.50m. Again her major opponents were absent from this competition and the next best was 30cm adrift of her victory.
Roman Smirnov was a double sprint winner. Besides clocking 6.78 sec at his favourite 60m, he won the 300m as well – 33.72sec.
The well known Vyacheskav Shabunin has set another age best for a 40-year-old. After running 3000m in 8:04.34 on the 7 January in Yekaterinburg he now managed to achieve the same ‘record’ feat for 1000m – 2:24.93. That was enough to take second place overall in the race behind Yuriy Koldin who finished in 2:21.68.
Anna Alminova, the European 1500m champion, is doing very well at the beginning of the 2010 season now clocking 2:40.33 for the women’s 1000m. And her husband Victor Chistyakov made it a happy family occasion by winning the Pole Vault with a 5.60m clearance.
800m specialist Dmitriy Bogdanov who was European Indoor champion in 2005, is having a go at some speed work and won the 500m in 1:02.75, and in the process surprisingly left two 400m Russian stars Yevgeniy Lebedev - 1:04.23 - and Ivan Kozhukhar - 1:04.26 - far behind.
Yelena Migunova defeated her female opponents at the same distance – 1:09.08, with the former World Indoor 400m champion and the multiple international relay medallist Natalya Nazarova the runner up – 1:10.00.
In the 60m Hurdles one of Russia's Olympic winning 4x100m relay team Aleksandra Fedoriva, who won on the flat in Yekaterinburg last week, clocked 8.13 sec for the victory over the barriers. Aleksandra Antonova lost out by a hundredth of a second. The men's 60m Hurdles were dominated by Sergei Molchanov – 7.97 sec.
Another Olympic 4x100m relay squad member Yevgeniya Polyakova clocked 7.37sec for a first place in the women's 60m dash. Yuna Mehti-Zade was the runner up – 7.45.
Aleksandr Petrenko triple jumped 16.73m beating Yevgeniy Plotnir whose best was 16.54, while Vladimir Chicherov, the junior brother of the well known Russian high jumper Anna Chicherova, got third place 16.26m
Pavel Karavaev won the men's Long Jump with a modest 7.81m, and Maksim Sidorov was the strongest in men's Shot Put with his 19.09m effort.
Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov for the IAAF
