Olga Kaniskina of Russia celebrates winning the gold medal in the women's 20km Race Walk (© Getty Images)
Walking at the speed of a 3:05 marathon runner, Olga Kaniskina today completed another commanding performance by the No.1 double act in athletics.
There seems to be no separating Russia’s Valeriy Borchin, winner of the men’s 20km race walk on day one of these World championships, and Kaniskina, who took the corresponding women’s gold medal on day two.
And so another chapter has been written in the Tale of Valeriy Borchin and the Lucky Flowers. Last year, at the Beijing Olympics, Borchin gave his winner’s bouquet from his medal ceremony to Gulnara Galkina-Samitova as she was heading for the coffee shop on the afternoon of her 3000m steeplechase final, in which she would break the world record.
Yesterday Borchin gave his flowers to Kaniskina. “This is very symbolic,” Kaniskina said. “Every bunch of flowers Valeriy gives to anyone brings a gold medal.”
Where Borchin goes, Kaniskina goes. Where he wins, she wins, almost without exception. And vice versa. Since the last World Championships, in Osaka two years ago, when Kaniskina won but Borchin failed to finish, their racing programme and results have been almost identical.
A valuable friendship
The two Russians have made seven significant race appearances, recording a Borchin/Kaniskina double on five occasions: at the 2008 and 2009 Russian Winter Championships, at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, at the 2009 Race Walking Challenge, in Wuxi, China, and now here in Berlin. The only exceptions have been at the 2008 World Cup in Cheboksary, Russia, where Kaniskina won but Borchin was second, and at the 2009 Race Walking Challenge, in Krakow, where Borchin won but Kaniskina had to settle for second place.
Both hail from the Republic of Mordovia, Kaniskina from Saransk and Borchin from the village of Povadimovo, 90km outside Saransk. There, some 650km east of Moscow, they both attend the race walking school. Their relationship is one of no more than good friends but it is a friendship that Kaniskina cherishes.
“We are very good friends,” Kaniskina said, adding that they live in adjacent rooms. “We are a big team of race walkers and we spend a lot of time training together. We talk about the same things in life that friends in the world talk about, not just about race walking.”
Kaniskina’s successful defence of her world title, and her $60,000 winner’s purse, comes 10 years after her somewhat less valuable first prize in race walking. Competing in the 1999 Russian Championships, she won candy for last place. Now 24, she was then 14, competing over 3km.”I was the last to finish,” she said. “This was unforgettable.”
Rising through the ranks, patiently
For the next four years, Kaniskina trained once a day, stepping up to twice a day in 2004. In 2005 she started winning medals – silver at the Russian Championships and European Under-23s – and in 2006, her first in the senior ranks, she took her first big title at the Russian Championships.
However, Kaniskina was under orders not to win at the 2006 European Championships, in Gotheburg. The team’s top athlete, Irina Petrova, was taken to hospital with appendicitis the night before the race. While Kaniskina was promising, she lacked Petrova’s experience.
Kaniskina recalled: “In our sport it is very important that the judges know you, know your technique. I was not known at all so my coach strictly told me: ‘Don’t walk first even if you feel you can. Otherwise you for sure will be disqualified.” Kaniskina obeyed and finished second behind Rita Turava, from Belarus.
In words that would prove prophetic, her coach told Kaniskina to be patient. “Your time to win comes later,” he said. Not much later as events turned out. In 2007 Kaniskina claimed her first global gold medal and, with two world titles, one Olympic, and one World Cup, she has not looked back.
They say that, in Saransk, race walking is as popular as football is in other parts of the world. After her first world title, the Mordovian government gave Kaniskina a two-bedroom flat. She has proven she can win in all conditions. In Osaka she triumphed in heat, as she did today – in marked contrast to her victory in rainy Beijing.
David Powell for the IAAF
