Tatyana Lebedeva celebrates Paris win (© Getty Images)
Double World outdoor Triple Jump champion Tatyana Lebedeva who made a spectacular double winning opening to her indoor season last weekend, is set to be the star attraction of the “Russian Winter” indoor meeting on 1 February.
Yesterday the All-Russia Athletic Federation held a press conference to present this year’s line-up for the annual meeting in Moscow. It was announced that financial support from the Russian sports ministry and sponsors had made it possible to invite athletes from 18 countries including many top international stars.
14.94m and 6.93m double opener!
However, top of the bill will be Russia's own Tatyana Lebedeva who began her indoor season in spectacular fashion in Govenor Volgograd on 17 January by producing a 14.94m Triple Jump performance, and also taking the Long Jump competition with a 6.93m leap. Last year at the same meeting Lebedeva jumped ‘just’ 14.16m and 6.39m respectively.
Encouraged by Lebedeva’s opening display some experts are already predicting that the 15.16m World Indoor record of Britain’s Ashia Hansen, the World Indoor champion, could be under threat on 1 February.
As well as retaining her World title in Paris last summer in a season’s best of 15.18m, 27 year-old Lebedeva, who took 2002 off to have a baby, also won three of the six Golden League meetings, the inaugural World Athletics Final in Monaco, and had five competitions over 15 metres.
Pedroso, Averbukh, Klyugin...
Elsewhere on the Moscow starting card, in the men’s Long Jump Russia’s best Vitaliy Shkurlatov is going to battle against Ivan Pedroso the former five-time World Indoor champion, and his fellow Cuban Luis Meliz.
No less weighty will be the field for the men’s Pole Vault. Igor Pavlov will take on a top-notch international field including European champion Aleksander Averbukh of Israel, USA’s Jeff Hartwig the area record holder, and France’s Roman Mesnil who was the world’s highest vaulter last summer.
Also presenting attractive starting lists at the “Russian Winter” are the two High Jump competitions.
In men’s event we‘ll see Russia's Mikhail Tsvetkov in the company of Olympic champion Sergei Klyugin, Dragutin Topic (SCG), Michal Benek (POL) and Stefan Vasilache (ROM).
Chicherova versus Kuptsova
But a much more tense fight is predicted in women’s High Jump. Marina Kuptsova will face her great rival and national record holder Anna Chicherova, Vita Palamar of Ukraine and Romania’s Monika Iagar. With this array of talent it will be a surprise if the contest does not go above 2 metres.
However, Chicherova’s coach Yevgeniy Zagorulko says that his pupil is not going to have such a dramatic early indoor season as last year when she jumped to a new Russian indoor record of 2.04 in Yekaterinburg (7 Feb), the high performance in the world last winter.
“Now Anna is still continuing her the training work to get the potential she needs to compete in Budapest,” commented Zagorulko. “Her main test will come later at the meeting in Arnstadt (Feb 7) when her real form and how my training has worked will be shown. From that point she will be on her way to the top form for Budapest. Last year she had no time to get more strength or to build up a more solid base. She had some weak points, but now we are working to get rid of them.”
However, Russian 400m star Natalya Nazarova has not yet decided about her participation in the “Russian Winter”.
“I am quite satisfied with the results of my previous competitions, said Narazova. “It was good to recently produce that record time in 500m, but now I need to begin very serious preparation for the World Indoor championships because it is very important for me to show my best performance in Budapest. That is why I’d like to make only one start before Budapest it will Russian championships.”
