Yevgeniya Isakova celebrates winning the 400m Hurdles final in Gothenburg (© Getty Images)
Russia’s Yevgeniya Isakova who hails from the city of St-Petersburg won Women’s 400m Hurdles at the 2006 European Championships. The 28-year-old was one of the many surprise medal winning packages of the Russian women’s squad whose onslaught on their continental rivals in Gothenburg netted a total of 11 gold, 9 silver and 8 bronze medals.
Isakova was born on 27 November 1978 into a family where everybody liked sport. Her father, for instance, was a master of the sport of diving. But the young Isakova was somehow indifferent to all sport activities, and up to the age of 11 she preferred dancing to all other entertainments.
Chance meeting
As all fairy tales begin - for that surely is the story of Isakova’s rise to international success last summer - ‘once upon a time’ this child came to her local sports club to enjoy a dancing party. Dressed in her very best clothes Isakova came looking for the dance hall but by mistake found herself walking into the gymnasium. There she found boys and girls of her own age running and jumping under the guidance of a friendly female coach who explained to their unexpected visitor that this was a regular practice session of the local track-and-field club, and that the dance she was looking for was going on in the next building. However, she also added that if Isakova was interested that she would be very welcome to drop in for another visit to the club the following Monday evening.
That chance meeting took place 17-years-ago, and, unbeknown to Isakova at the time, she had just made her first acquaintance with Margarita Mikhailova who would become her coach, for of course the following Monday the youngster did take up her offer to return to the club.
Margarita Mikhailova was the spouse of a famous Russian sprint hurdler Anatoliy Mikhailov, and it was Mikhailov who soon succeeded his wife in coaching Isakova, with the emphasis on the combined events. It’s interesting to note that Natalya Antyukh, who is now 25, and the 400m bronze medallist at the Athens Olympic Games, was in the same group of young athletes with Isakova.
Coaching too
While Isakova was to move away from multi-events she was always thankful for the start in athletics given to her by this coaching couple. Mirroring their role in her sports upbringing, after graduating from the Academy of Physical Sport and Culture Isakova started coaching children too. It is something she still loves to do. “When I was in Sweden at the European Championships I missed my pupils greatly,” confessed the European champion.
No improvement
The young Isakova moved to middle distances posting bests in the 800m in 2000 of 2:04.61 (outdoors) and 2:06.37 (indoors) but then failed to improve any further. Understanding that the 800m wasn’t “her distance” either and in consultation with Anatoliy Mikhailov, they decided she should switch to the 400m Hurdles. But again she progressed very slowly - 56.55 (2001); 57.98 (02); 56.25 (03) – so much so that after weighing up her opportunities she began to make up her mind to retire.
New beginning
But just as she had stumbled into that gymnasium as a child and begun her athletics life, so she then also stumbled upon her new coach, Gennadiy Zhubryakov. For by chance at the moment Isakova was considering retirement Zhubryakov who had been coaching abroad for many years returned to St-Petersburg, and Anatoliy Mikhailov seeing his pupil’s unhappiness generously introduced her to Zhubryakov.
There was immediate improvement in 2004 to a new personal best of 55.62, and when Isakova opened her 2005 summer with a victory in Sochi on 27 May the changes that her new coach had brought were there for all to see. Suddenly her PB was down to 55.20! Then in her next outing at the Znamenskiy Brothers Memorial on 25 June there was a further descent to 55.00, though this time she finished second.
A 55.56 run in her heat at the national championships (10 July) and a second place in the final with a staggering improvement to a new PB of 54.39 made some observers optimistic that success would follow at the World Championships the following month in Helsinki. However, unluckily Isakova got injured during warm-up before the start of her opening heat and so she could not race.
But her bad luck didn’t discourage her as we witnessed last summer.
“I’m so much thankful to my former coach Mikhailov,” said Isakova. “If it hadn’t been for him I’d have given-up athletics. And I must admit that things are going well with Gennadiy Zhubryakov. We are working together for the third year and I’m improving my results steadily. The season of 2006 was the most successful in my career. I won practically all major competitions including the two most important – the Russian Nationals and the Europeans.”
She also admitted that she had entered the final of the European Championships with the opinion that any medal would be a kind of success.
In 2006, she ran 15 races at 400m Hurdles (including heats) and won all but three races. She opened with a promising 54.45 victory in Valencia (27 May), and followed her first national title (55.09) on 12 June with a second place finish at the European Cup in Spain on 28 June (55.82), and her fitness was reconfirmed with a 54.77 victory mid-July in Tula.
After a 55.21 run in her heat in Gothenburg, all the portents looked good when she cruised to a PB of 54.17 in her semi-final, before reducing that further to 53.93 by resisting the usual charge of Olympic champion Fani Halkia of Greece (54.02) to take the European title. Those three days in Gothenburg - 7, 8, 9 August - finally confirmed that the change from dancer to athlete had been a wise decision.
A race of unequal parts
Isakova’s manner of running 400m Hurdles is a bit special and she knows it herself. It looks like the distance for her is divided into three unequal parts. Usually she is fast in the first 200 metres. Then at the seventh hurdle there comes something like a crisis at which point her opponents usually retake the advantage. But then when the race looks like it is lost Isakova again accelerates, this time with all her might and at the finishing line there is nothing to stop her. And it was exactly in this fashion that she took the European gold.
“I may presume that I’m on the right course,” says Isakova. “And now I have the knowledge of how to win. So I’m looking much forward to the World Championships in Osaka.”
And her 53.98 win in Shanghai, China (23 Sep), her last race of 2006 proved that her run in Gothenburg was no ‘one-off’. So look out Japan, her comes Isakova!
Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov for the IAAF
