Yuriy Borzakovskiy in the 800m during the 2000 CGU International at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow (© Getty Images)
The Russian national championships in Tula (July 12-15) were the decisive moment for selection of the Edmonton World championships team. Fierce battles occurred in every event, and it was quite clear that the national elite were on the way to top form after participating in several European meetings.
However the main sensation came from an athlete who did not participate in Tula. Yuriy Borzakovskiy sent a letter to the President of the All Russia Athletic Federation Valentin Balahnichev requesting that he would prefer not to run at the World Championships. The athlete felt that to start in Edmonton would be very stressful for him and would endanger his future in the sport, and furthermore, feels that is quite enough in one year to be crowned World Indoor Champion.
Valentin Balahnichev says that his understands Yuriy’s problems and he is not going to dictate to the athlete where and how he should compete. Nevertheless the head coach is doing his utmost to keep Borzakovskiy in the team and wants to talk with him in the next couple of days.
“Yuriy is giving a great present to his rivals, I can not understand why he is running from the World Championships, “ commented the leading middle distance running coach, Yekaterina Podkopayeva.
Moscow pole vaulter Svetlana Feofanova again refreshed her European record and reached 4.70m. She made one very impressive attempt at 4.82m and stopped jumping.
She said that she wanted to save her best jumps for Edmonton and would not repeat the mistakes made in Lisbon.
Another golden hope for the Russian team Olga Yegorova has calculated every move on her way to Edmonton in order to achieve in Canada world best performances in both the 1500m and 5000m.
Last year’s Golden League jackpot winner long jumper Tatiana Kotova performed 7.09m in Tula.
“My main rival in Edmonton will be Drechsler and I am going to have to jump between 7.00m to 7.20m mark, “ she said after the competition. “I have got a new feeling of my jump. We are using some new techniques which mean that I am running faster and have incorporated some of the techniques used by men. I want to jump like the boys!”
Olympic champion Sergey Kliugin was the high jump winner in with 2.33m. But in Edmonton he will face stiff competition from three other Russian jumpers – defending World Champion Viacheslav Voronin, Yaroslav Rybakov and Aleksey Kravtsov.
The head jumps coach Yevgeniy Zagorulko said that his team will be very motivated and they’ll be fighting in Edmonton against each other first of all to be named number one in Russia.
Nikolay Ivanov for IAAF
