Translated material
We arrived, we ran, we jumped
The Russian team won the European Athletics Championships
The Russian team won a landslide victory at the 20th European Championship, which ended on Sunday in Barcelona. Our team has 24 medals (10 gold, 6 silver and 8 bronze). The second place was taken by the French (8--6--4), the third by the British (6--7--6).In the ranking of the Russian team’s performance at these competitions (the debut took place in 1994), this is the third result after the European Championships of 2006 and 1994. In 1994 in Helsinki, our team finished with ten gold, eight silver and seven bronze medals. In 2006 in Gothenburg we won 12 gold, 12 silver and 10 bronze. But here’s what’s interesting: if four years ago, out of 12 victories, 11 came from the female half of the team, but now, through the efforts of our men, three gold medals have been won - in the 20 km walk, high jump and 4x400 m relay race. So progress is obvious. Although the problem remains: men need to pull themselves up.
On the other hand, our main rivals at this championship have the same difficulties, although just the opposite. For the French, seven out of eight gold medals were brought to the team by men, for the British - five out of six.
What else will the Barcelona championship be remembered for? For the first time in the history of these competitions, Russians occupied the entire podium in two disciplines at once - 20 km walking and women's 400 m running.
And, of course, in the ranking of the most striking events is the sensational victory of the Russians in the men's 4x400 m relay. Even in Soviet times it was not possible to achieve something like this, but here was such a surprise at the end of the championship, in the last final of the competition.
It was impossible to imagine a better ending. Maxim Dyldin, Alexey Aksenov, Pavel Trenikhin and Vladimir Krasnov loudly slammed the door goodbye. We won silver (2002) and bronze (1994) awards in this discipline. Now there are gold ones too.
Beijing Olympic bronze medalist Dyldin ran the first round perfectly, sending Alekhine first to the second stage. Alexey retained the leadership, but extremely unsuccessfully passed the wand to Trenikhin. A second of confusion - and the Russian team is already only fifth. Everything seemed to be impossible to make up for lost time. But the stunningly beautiful leap taken by Pavel in the last meters of the distance again brings our team forward. The advantage is small, but Krasnov, in a tough fight, managed to withstand the onslaught of the Englishman Martin Rooney and the Belgian Jonathan Borley. 3 min. 02.14 sec. - such is the time of the victors. Team Great Britain was behind them by 11 hundredths of a second, and Belgium by 0.46.
And the last day of the competition began for us as a continuation of the previous one, in which we could not win a single award. Anna Alminova, who arrived in Barcelona as the season leader with a result of 3:57.65, did not have a good run at the 1500 m distance. I couldn’t keep up with the pace suggested by myself and simply “stopped” in the last meters. As a result, only the sixth time at the finish line (4:02.24) with a two-second gap from the Spanish champion Nuria Fernandez.
The expected medal also disappeared in the women's 5000 m race, where Russia was represented by Maria Konovalova, Elizaveta Grechishnikova and Olga Golovkina. Half a month ago, Maria won the national qualifying championship in Saransk with the third result of the season in Europe (14:49.69) and all the prospects that follow from this for her in Barcelona. But the same tactics of leading from the very first meters, which did not bring any dividends to Alminova, ended in failure for Konovalova (15.08.84). There were four rivals who eventually beat her: two from Turkey (former citizens of Ethiopia), two from Portugal. “Turkish” Elvan Abeylegesse won her second medal at this competition, this time silver (14:54.44), and her teammate Alemitu Bekele (14:52.20) won gold with a new European Championships record. Grechishnikova is eighth (15.16.19), Golovkina is eleventh (15.31.11).
Our only participant in the final high jump competition, Svetlana Shkolina, also stopped at the approaches to the podium. Her best jump of 1 m 97 cm only brought her to fourth place, because to get into the medals she had to overcome the grandmaster limit of two meters. As, for example, the two-time world champion Croatian Blanka Vlasic did. The jump of 2.03, which brought her victory, was a repetition of the European Championships record held by Olympic champion Tia Hellebaut from Belgium. Swede Emma Green and German Ariane Friedrich lost two centimeters to her, taking the second and third steps of the podium, respectively.
The fourth and most unexpected loss of the day was in the women's 4x100m relay, in which Yuna Mehdi-Zadeh, Alexandra Fedoriva, Yulia Gushchina and Yulia Chermoshanskaya ran for the team.
Problems in this type of program for us began at the Russian Championship in Saransk, where Evgenia Polyakova, who specializes in the first stage, was injured. The coaches had to include in the lineup the silver medalist of the national championship, Mehdi-Zade, with whom our Olympic champions had not yet run at international competitions. Nevertheless, it was not this factor that was decisive, but an error made when transferring the stick from the second stage to the third. Fedoriva, as she later admitted, did not see the mark from which Gushchina was running away; Gushchina, according to her, reacted too quickly to Fedoriva’s pass, and as a result, almost two tenths of a second were lost, which turned out to be irreplaceable. As a result, only fourth place after the teams of Ukraine, France and Poland.
While the Russian team was rocking, the French, who took the second team place after us, did not waste any time: they won the 4x100 m relay race, took two first places in the men's 3000 m steeplechase, won silver in the women's 1500 m race and men's long jump. And our seemingly comfortable advantage in the fight for the team championship came to naught. Before the final two events of the program - the women's and men's 4x400 m relays, the Russian and French teams had the same number of gold (8) and silver (6) medals. We were ahead of them in bronze (8 versus 4). In general, victory in the women's relay was needed like air.
Hand on heart, we must admit that no one, of course, doubted her, given the fact that our girls took the entire podium in the individual 400-meter race. But the relay is one of the most unpredictable disciplines (the example of the women's 4x100 m relay once again proved this): in the baton passing sector, anything could happen.
But, fortunately, it did not happen: Anastasia Kapachinskaya, Antonina Krivoshapka, Ksenia Ustalova and Tatyana Firova did not leave their rivals a single chance, finishing with the best result of the season in the world - 3.21.26. The German athletes who took second place lost to the Russians by almost 3 seconds.
And then the men's relay race broke out, after which we finally put everyone on their backs.