Nataliia Dobrynska in the heptathlon at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (© AFP / Getty Images)
The scene in the immediate aftermath of the heptathlon at the Beijing 2008 Olympics was not dissimilar to the classic shot of Daley Thompson in the wake of his decathlon world record at the 1982 European Championships in Athens.
Like the Great British master of combined events, there was Nataliia Dobrynska, standing victorious, hands nonchalantly on hips with her vanquished rivals lying flat on their backs, strewn across the Bird’s Nest track in a collective state of exhaustion.
Nataliia Dobrynska after the 2008 Olympic heptathlon (© Getty Images)
Proudly wearing the blue and yellow Ukrainian leotard and spikes she has generously donated to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA), Dobrynska did not just shatter her fellow competitors in the Chinese capital.
She did the same to the form book.
The 26-year-old lined up for the first of the seven events ranked 13th.
At the annual Hypo Meeting in Gotzis 10 weeks earlier, Dobrynska finished a distant ninth with 6268, having been suffering from a respiratory illness at that time. Nonetheless, without an international combined events victory to her name, and with a modest 6387 PB dating back to 2003, Dobrynska was not among those expected to challenge for the Olympic heptathlon crown left up for grabs by Carolina Kluft’s decision to concentrate on the long jump.
Not that the Ukrainian’s subsequent triumph came as a surprise to everyone.
Dobrynska herself arrived in Beijing convinced that she was capable of seizing her chance in a wide-open contest.
“Coming into the Games, I thought I could win,” she confessed after the two-day competition was done. “I expected to set personal bests in every event.”
As it happened, Dobrynska recorded lifetime bests in five of the seven disciplines.
She notched three on the first day, opening with 13.44 in the 100m hurdles, throwing 17.29m in the shot, and clocking 24.39 in the 200m.
Together with a 1.80m high jump, that left her lying in second place with 3996 points, 64 behind US champion Hyleas Fountain, with Britain’s 2004 Olympic bronze medallist Kelly Sotherton in third place.
Dobrynska edged into the lead by 16 points with a long jump PB of 6.63m at the start of day two, before moving 145 clear with a lifetime best of 46.80m in the javelin.
She could afford to ease round the 800m in 2:17:72 and still comfortably collect the gold medal with a tally of 6733 points, a huge improvement of 346 points on her PB.
Following the doping disqualifications of Lyudmila Blonska and Tatyana Chernova, Fountain took the silver medal with 6619 and Sotherton ultimately the bronze with 6517.
Nataliya Dobrynska and Sebastian Coe in Paris (© Christel Saneh for World Athletics)
‘Everything and everyone around me didn’t matter’
On the World Athletics Inside Track Podcast in April this year, Dobrynska was asked by host Sotherton how it felt to be crowned as Olympic champion.
“When I crossed the finish line, I realised what it meant,” she told her old rival.
“During that era, it felt as though all of us were really close, as though we were all in a line, so it was always difficult to predict who was going to win.
“But I always tried to just concentrate on myself, on my technique, on what I needed to do. Everything and everyone around me didn’t matter.”
Several years prior, Dobrynska described the Beijing Olympic heptathlon as “the perfect competition for me”.
The road to that perfection had been a long and winding one.
Born in Vinnytsia in 1982, Dobrynska was blessed with high quality sporting genes. Her mother, a sports journalist, was a handball player and shot putter. Her father was a skier and long distance runner.
She was eight when her father took her to a track for the first time and in 1999, aged 17, she won her first national junior heptathlon title.
Her first impact at international level came at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Budapest in March 2004, where she finished just 32 points down on Naide Gomes of Portugal with a silver medal winning pentathlon tally of 4727.
Eighth in the heptathlon at that summer’s Olympics in Athens, Dobrynska claimed her second international medal in another indoor pentathlon, finishing third with 4667 behind the imperious Kluft (4948) and Sotherton (4733) at the 2005 European Indoor Championships in Madrid.
Nataliiaa Dobrynska in the heptathlon shot put at the 2009 World Championships (© Getty Images)
Injury dogged Dobrynska after her 2008 triumph in Beijing but she made three more podium finishes – all of them in tussles with her eventual successor as Olympic champion, Jessica Ennis-Hill.
The emerging Briton won the 2009 world heptathlon title in Berlin, where Dobrynska finished fourth, and she was too strong for the Ukrainian at the 2010 World Indoor Championships in Doha. Ennis-Hill won with 4937, breaking Kluft’s championship record. Dobrynska finished a solid second with 4851.
In a gripping heptathlon head-to-head at the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona, Dobrynska scored a PB of 6778 but again had to settle for silver, behind Ennis-Hill’s championship record of 6823.
Golden memorial
It was different at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul in 2012. Dobrynska was the epitome of consistency through all five diciplines, becoming the first woman to cross the 5000-point barrier in the indoor pentathlon.
Nailing PBs in the long jump (6.57m) and 800m (2:11.15), she finished with a points tally of 5013, breaking Irina Belova’s 20-year-old world record by 22. Ennis took silver with 4965.
Unknown to the watching world, Dobrynska’s husband and coach Dmytro Polyakov was terminally ill back home, phoning and texting instructions to her. He died of cancer two weeks later.
It said much about Dobrynska’s character that she was able to honour her beloved ‘Dima’ with a world record and a gold medal in Istanbul and, through the heartbreak of such a tragic loss, that she managed to prepare to defend her Olympic title in London later that year.
Far from her best, after ending the opening day in 10th place, she withdrew after two fouls and a botched 3.70m effort in the long jump, relinquishing her crown for Ennis-Hill.
Retirement followed in 2013 but the 2008 Olympic heptathlon champion has since continued to serve her sport as a leading administrator.
A World Athletics Council Member and vice president of the Ukrainian Athletics Federation, Dobrynska has helped track and field maintain a strong sporting influence in her homeland through the ravages of wartime.
“The Kids’ Athletics programme from World Athletics has been provided to many of the small cities in Ukraine so that kids can compete and enjoy the sport,” she said on Inside Track.
“The sport cannot stop. Otherwise, we may lose the next generation of athletes.”
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
• Check out Dobrynska’s leotard and spikes in glorious 3D in the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA)
