Previews28 Jul 2004


Lebedeva seeking Long Jump Athens selection - Russian Championships Preview for Day Three

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Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS) wins the Long Jump final in Budapest (© Getty Images)

The final stage of the Russian Track and Field Championships starts on Thursday the 29th at the “Arsenal” stadium in Tula. It will then be the time for the sprinters, middle distance runners, hurdlers, jumpers, and steeple chaser to come on stage.

The selection procedure to the Russian national Olympic team follows a procedure called 1+1+1. To make things clear, the Russian champion makes the team automatically; the second selected athlete is picked out between the silver and the bronze medal winner based on the decision of the All Russian Athletic Federation according to the proposal of the Coaches Council of the national team.

And finally the third selected athlete for the Olympic Games is what is called the “athlete of the prospective” or the athlete of the future who is chosen among young athletes. The coaches are staking on this last one in the future.

Obviously all selected athletes must fulfill the Olympic standards. The system is far from being easy, isn’t it?

However there are several athletes who are exempted from this principle as the Head Coach of the national team Valeriy Kulichenko has the power to dispense the athletes who are topping the World Season’s lists from having to go through the complicated selection system.

Following Kulichenko’s exemption, six athletes are already automatically selected and they are decathlon specialist Lev Lobodin, Yelena Isinbaeva and Svetlana Feofanova (pole vault), Elena Sleserenko in the high jump, Tatyana Lebedeva (triple jump) and the long distance runner Olga Yegorova.

All of the above with the exception of Lev Lobodin are World champions.

Tatyana Lebedeva will nevertheless compete in Tula as her Olympic automatic selection does only apply to the triple jump and it is commonly known that Lebedeva is very eager to compete in the Long Jump as well in Athens.

As far as 5000m World champion Olga Yegorova is concerned she has opted for the shorter 1500m distance and in Tula there will be a great battle for the qualifying spot as no fewer than five or even six strong contenders will line-up with the most well-known among them being reigning World champion Tatyana Tomashova.

However the most severe battle is expected to take place at 400m, where not only three places at individual distance are at stake but the six so much desired places in the relay ream. 

Taking into consideration the mere fact that there are four representatives of Russia in the world top ten list the tough concurrency is inevitable. The struggle will begin even in preliminaries as making the final and thus the Russian 4x400m relay team is virtually synonym of winning an Olympic medal!

Other disciplines that seem to be most interesting are the women’s 400m hurdles where World record holder Yuliya Pechonkina is leading the field, the women’s long jump with two World champions Tatyana Lebedeva and Tatyana Kotova competing against the revelation of the season Irina Simagina.

The outcome of the women’s high jump, triple jump and pole vault are also very much awaited.
 
It is yet unknown whether newly crowned 5000m Russian champion Gulnara Samitova will take part in 1500m or her favoured 3000m steeple where she broke the world record not so long ago.

As it is often the case at Russian national championships, all women events are expected to offer great battles!

As far as the men are concerned the picture is not as bright as there are less potential Olympic heroes and the number of those who will make the national Olympic team is likely not to be very high.

But still there are several disciplines where the expectations are high enough. All fans and specialists are looking forward to seeing Yuriy Borzakovskiy competing as he hasn’t been running a lot recently.

Triple jumper Danil Burchnya is also very much awaited since the European Cup where he jumped 17.41m.
The high jump should also offer good performances with Rybakov, Klugin and Voronin all aiming at an Olympic berth.

Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov to the IAAF         
 

 

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