Pyleva had a bad start at the European Championships

Chronicle of sporting events

Russian Olga Pyleva, who returned to biathlon after a two-year disqualification for doping, completed her first 15 km individual race at the European Championships in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, only 27th. The athlete made three mistakes on the shooting range, finishing more than five minutes behind the winner Natalia Levchenkova from Moldova. The rest of our “shooting skiers” performed a little better: Yana Romanova was fourth, Natalya Sokolova, who previously competed for the Belarusian national team, finished the race ninth, Nadezhda Chastina was 21st.

Yesterday's men's 20 km individual race brought victory to Russian Sergei Balandin. Domestic juniors were not left without medals. The men's 15 km race brought victory to three-time world junior champion Anton Shipulin. Irina Maksimova won a bronze medal in the 12.5 km race.

Russian swimmers spring surprises

The Russian Open Swimming Championship continues in St. Petersburg, with 500 athletes from six countries taking part. Based on the results of this tournament, a team will be formed that will go to the European Championships in Eindhoven, Holland.

The first days of the championship brought many surprises. The main one was the performance of 18-year-old Anastasia Zueva. In the 200m backstroke, the athlete representing the Penza and Moscow regions beat Athens Olympic medalist Stanislava Komarova, who is now training under the guidance of Gennady Turetsky, the mentor of four-time Olympic champion Alexander Popov. Zueva swam the 200 m distance in 2:09.84, while Komarova finished second with a result of 2:13.57. A day earlier, Zueva broke the European record held by the Frenchwoman Laure Manaud, in the same event at a distance half as long - 59.61 seconds. Komarova was only fourth in the 100-meter dash.

Yuriy Prilukov won silver in the 400m medley. Before this start, he won a gold medal in the championship as part of the 4x200 m relay. Titled domestic breaststrokers Dmitry Komornikov and Roman Sludnov had an unsuccessful start at the championship. At 200 m, Sludnov was fifth in the preliminary heat, Komornikov did not make it to the final. The same picture was repeated with spin athlete Arkady Vyatchanin in the 100-meter dash. In the semi-finals he was only twelfth. According to the swimmer himself, he has not yet been able to recover from the stress, the amount of work that he did at the Krugloye Lake base. However, the main coach of the national team, Alexander Klokov, called Vyatchanin’s performance at the current start “the worst in his entire sports career.” Klokov emphasized that only those swimmers who will show results in the city on the Neva will be included in the team that will go to Holland, regardless of their previous titles and titles.

Larionov suspended from competition until the end of the season

Russian figure skater Yuri Larionov has been suspended from participating in competitions, whether domestic or international, until the end of the season. The reason for this was a positive doping test taken on November 26, 2007 during out-of-competition control by WADA representatives. A banned drug, furosemide, was found in the skater’s samples.

As the head of the All-Russian Figure Skating Federation Valentin Piseev explained to the Vremya Novostey correspondent, the WFFK recently received a letter from the International Skating Union (ISU), which officially notified about this incident regarding Larionov’s positive doping test. “All the necessary documents, certificates from doctors, explanatory notes from the athlete, coaches, and the leadership of our federation have already been sent to the ISU disciplinary committee. In three weeks, its members will make a final verdict. We hope that all the nuances will be taken into account,” explained Valentin Piseev. He also added that no one is going to put an end to the career of a young and promising athlete. Let us recall that this season, for the first time in their careers, performing at the adult stage of the Grand Prix in the USA, the couple Vera Bazarova and Yuri Larionov became bronze medalists of the tournament.

According to Piseev, cases of doping in figure skating are rare. The only Russian athlete who was caught using a prohibited drug was Elena Berezhnaya. In 2000, at the World Championships in Nice, having a cold, Berezhnaya dropped herself a regular medicine that contained ephedrine. Then the Russian woman was disqualified for three months.

The youth of the Siberian club are undefeated

The matches of the first round of the semi-final round of the Youth Basketball League (Children and Youth Basketball League) championship among young men took place in Moscow and Surgut.

12 teams are fighting for access to the final tournament of the 2007/08 championship. In the first round they were divided into groups according to territorial principle - “West” and “East”. So far, only the juniors from Novosibirsk Lokomotiv have avoided defeat, winning all five matches. The reservists of Triumph (Lyubertsy), CSKA, Universitet-Yugra (Surgut) - four wins each), CSK VVS-Samara, Chelyabinsk Dynamo - three each also have good prospects for getting into the eight finalists of the Youth League. ). They can compete with Spartak St. Petersburg, Dynamo Moscow and Ural Great, who are one victory behind. The second round matches, based on the results of which the participants in the final tournament will be named, will be held on March 10-15.

Let us remind you that the current championship of the strongest young basketball players in the country is already the seventh in history. Over the years of its existence, the league, held by the Russian Federation with the support of the general sponsor of the tournament, JSC Lebedyansky, has opened to the general public dozens of players who have made their mark in adult basketball. Suffice it to say that two DYBL graduates - Anton Ponkrashov and Nikita Shabalkin - became European champions this fall as part of the Russian national team, and four more players (Egor Vyaltsev, Vitaly Fridzon, Nikita Kurbanov, Dmitry Khvostov) were among its candidates.

Prepared by Olga ERMOLINA