Valeriy Borchin of Russia wins the first gold medal of the 12th IAAF World Athletics Championships in the men's 20km race walk (© Getty Images)
Berlin, GermanyLast year it was a BMW jeep and this year $7000 converted to Russian currency that was waiting for Valeriy Borchin when he breasted the plastic tape at the Brandenburg Gate to win the first gold medal of these championships.
That of course is in addition to the $60,000 prize money he will get as winner of gold at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics.
Three days before these championships began Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had announced that any winner of an Olympic discipline would be presented with the money, but Borchin insisted he had completely forgotten about it until he was reminded by the Russian journalists awaiting him at the finish under the Brandenburg Gate. “Now I am happy to be reminded of it,” he said.
Unknown before Beijing, but unknown no more
That is likely to give the 22-year-old from Saransk a problem, though. Back home in Saransk, Mordovia, whenever he goes shopping he is recognised and hounded both by people and the press and he finds it “a bit irritating, a bit of a nightmare”. Borchin was unknown before his win in Beijing last year, but then he became famous and his quiet life of anonymity was over.
That gives him his next problem because after Olympic gold and now World gold he is likely to be doubly famous and all he wants to do is rest.
“The next aim is to restore my mind and above all my body,” said Borchin. “I want to give myself time to work out what I want to do next.”
Not yet ready to call himself "the best"
For the time being, then, there is no more talk of competition, but how does he view himself as a race walker after so much success. Is he the best walker in the world? “Not at the moment,” said Borchin. “My heroes are Jefferson Perez and Robert Korzeniowski and to be equal to them I need to win more and more.”
Although the race was held at Unter Den Linden, implying that there would be plenty of shade, in reality the athletes were competing mostly in the sun on a warm day. For the blonde, fair-skinned Russian, was this a problem?
“It was rather warm, but it was quite good for me because Beijing was much worse with so much heat and humidity, while here, according to the weather forecast, it was supposed to be much hotter than it was, 30 degrees, but it did not work out that way so we got off lightly. Conditions were quite good here.”
He was also asked if he thought about where he was walking and its past as a symbol of Russian dominance in twentieth century history. “Of course I was aware of the theatre of history, but not while I was competing. I was not thinking anything special. I could not afford myself any distractions while I was competing.”
What he did notice, however, was the change in the surface as he was walking, which he found difficult, though he thought there were plusses and minuses about competing away from the stadium in the historical centre of Berlin. “It is a problem with events organised with the start and finish in the stadium because when you leave the stadium and you go from tartan to asphalt it is not good for the legs. In general, asphalt is good for walkers, but here we went from asphalt to stone and back and that is also difficult, so there are advantages and disadvantages to both.”
As a boy, Borchin’s first sport was weightlifting and then middle distance running, but he also likes cross country skiing during the winter months back home in Saransk where he lives with his parents.
“I spoke to my parents after the race and they were very happy for me,” he said. “Now I need to get back there and restore myself,” he concluded. You get the feeling, though, that he'd be better off avoiding the shops after what he has done in Berlin.
Michael Butcher for the IAAF
