Translated material
Last jump
Russian athletes added to their medal tally
Russian athletes won two medals at the 28th European Aquatics Championships in Budapest. Nikolay Skvortsov became a bronze medalist in the 200m butterfly. The Russian pair won silver in the men's synchronized diving on the three-meter springboard.Alexander Dobroskok’s initiative was once supported by his synchronized partner, two-time Olympic champion Dmitry Sautin. This time Sautin performed in tandem with a new companion - 16-year-old Yuri Kunakov. By the way, the youngest participant in the jumping tournament, a member of the country’s youth team. It was with Kunakov that the 32-year-old veteran of our team recently won the Russian Championship on this apparatus. And head coach Alexey Evangulov promised that the new couple would still prove themselves in Budapest.
Indeed, the Kunakov-Sautin tandem finished the preliminary competition in second position. In the final, after two compulsory jumps, the athletes took third place, then moved to first and were in the lead until the sixth jump, ahead of the main rivals of the Germans, Tobias Schellenberg - Andreas Wels, by only half a point. During the competition, both Russians made mistakes, as did their rivals, but everything was decided by the last jump - three and a half revolutions forward from the back post. Sautina's young partner performed it unsuccessfully, so the Russian athletes ended up finishing second. A couple from Germany won.
Meanwhile, after the Olympics in Athens, many said that Sautin would end his sports career due to injuries and age. The athlete himself did not deny this. At first, Dmitry seemed to want to switch to coaching, but, apparently, something didn’t work out in the capital’s CSKA. And after a short break, the Voronezh athlete began training again. True, last season was one of the most unsuccessful in the career of Tatyana Starodubtseva’s student. The most titled diver - winner of two Olympics in 1996 and 2000, silver medalist of the 2000 Games, four-time bronze medalist of the 1992, 2000 and 2004 Olympics - missed the world championship in Montreal. This became known literally on the eve of our team’s departure to Canada. The head coach of our team was then himself discouraged by this turn of events, and answered all questions with the phrase that “Sautin is simply not ready.” What actually happened is anyone's guess. In any case, the victory not of the Chinese, but of the host of the championship, Canadian Alexandre Despatier, who won the lion's share of medals, seems to have helped Sautin sort himself out. At the current national championship, he looked extremely collected. And as the head coach of the national team, Alexander Evangulov, noted, if Dima had been in the same form at the Olympics, he would have won there without any doubt. Yesterday, Sautin and his new young partner won silver at the European Championships, proving to himself and others that it is too early to retire a veteran.
In total, eight sets of awards were competed for at the continental championship in Hungary. In addition to the men, medals were distributed among the 10-meter platform jumpers. Unfortunately, Olympic champion Yulia Koltunova and championship debutant Yana Zaitseva did not make it to the finals. The swimmers had six final heats at the following distances: women's 200m medley, men's 200m breaststroke, women's 100m backstroke, men's 200m butterfly, men's 50m backstroke, and the women's 4x200m freestyle relay.
After the semi-finals held the previous day, six Russians made it to the final round. Svetlana Karpeeva was in the final eight in medley swimming, Andrey Ivanov and Dmitry Komornikov in breaststroke, Anatoly Polyakov and Nikolay Skvortsov in butterfly and Arkady Vyatchanin in backstroke. However, only Skvortsov managed to make it to the top.