| Svetlana Kriveleva won the fourth gold for Russia Over the five days of the World Athletics Championships in Paris, Russian athletes won four gold medals. All the highest awards for our team were brought by representatives of the fairer sex. True, such a definition is hardly suitable for the shot put champion, 34-year-old Svetlana Kriveleva from Bryansk. The powerful woman playfully sent a 4-kilogram projectile past the 20-meter mark - 20.63. In the overall team competition, it was not possible to create a gap over the main competitors from the US team. American Tom Pappas answered Kriveleva’s “gold” with a victory in the decathlon. After five days of competition, the Stars and Stripes have three first places, and the Belarusian track and field athletes have the same number.
The competition in the shot put sector started with a bang. Three-time world champion German Astrid Kumbernuss did not meet the qualification standard and did not make it into the dozen finalists. The already high chances of Irina Korzhanenko and Svetlana Kriveleva to get on the podium have increased sharply. The main competitors remained athletes from neighboring countries, among whom the most dangerous was the 2002 European winter champion, Ukrainian Vita Pavlysh. Kriveleva showed extreme stability and ability to concentrate in the final series of attempts. She immediately took the lead, sending the projectile to 19.60, and then added at least 30 cm to this result three times in a row. The fourth attempt turned out best, which ultimately turned out to be victorious. Kriveleva demonstrates amazing athletic longevity - her first major success came back in 1992, when she won the Olympics in Barcelona.
For the less titled Korzhanenko, last year's champion of the Old World, on the contrary, things did not go well. Having pushed the projectile twice a little further than the 19-meter line, she completed the rest of her attempts in violation of the rules and was not among the winners. Pavlysh was confidently in second place, but the last entry into the sector of 23-year-old Nadezhda Ostapchuk from Belarus deprived the Ukrainian of “silver” - her shot flew 4 cm further.
We had the right to expect at least some kind of reward from our girls in the 400 m race. Three Russians took to the start of the final - Natalya Nazarova, Svetlana Pospelova and Olesya Zykina. Only Nazarova was able to cling to the leader of the world season, Mexican Ana Guevara. However, at the finish line she lost only three hundredths of a second to the bronze medalist, Senegalese Thiam.
Before the last event of the decathlon, our Lev Lobodin was in fourth place, but in the one and a half race he finished only ninth and eventually fell back to sixth position. In the regular 1500 m race, Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj confirmed the title of a great athlete. No matter how much the stadium supported the Frenchman Mahdi Baalou, competing on equal terms with the Moroccan turned out to be futile. Since the fall of 1996, El Guerrouj has lost only once at major international competitions - at the 2000 Olympics, where he received a silver award. In all other starts, Hisham was exclusively first. Our Vyacheslav Shabunin, although he showed the ninth result, looked quite decent in the company of the strongest “intermediate” players in the world.
Unfortunately, our long jumpers were disappointing. Daniil Burkenya in his group qualified ahead of only the athlete from the Cook Islands. Vitaly Shkurlatov also did not make it to the finals. Jumping to 7.85, it is impossible to count on anything serious.
World Athletics Championships. Women . Core . 1. Svetlana Kriveleva (Russia) - 20.63. 2. Nadezhda Ostapchuk (Belarus) - 20.12. 3. Vita Pavlysh (Ukraine) - 20.08. 100 m s/b. 1. Perita Felicien (Canada) - 12.53. 2. Brigitte Foster (Jamaica) - 12.57. 3. Misha McKelvey (USA) - 12.67. 400 m. 1. Ana Guevara (Mexico) - 48.89. 2. Lorraine Fenton (Jamaica) - 49.43. 3. Amy Thiam (Senegal) - 49.95. Men. 1500 m . 1. Hisham El Guerrouj (Morocco) - 3.31.77. 2. Mahdi Baala (France) - 3.32.31. 3. Ivan Geshko (Ukraine) - 3.33.17. Decathlon. 1. Tom Pappas (USA) - 8750. 2. Roman Sebrle (Czech Republic) - 8634. 3. Dmitry Karpov (Kazakhstan) - 8374. Ilya TRISVIATSKY |
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