Wednesday 16 January 2008
“The Christmas Cup” held in Moscow at the Brothers Znamenskiy Arena was a success. The first All-Russian tournament in the capital was marked by quite a number if excellent results.
And one of them was achieved by Olympic silver medallist Irina Simigina. After giving birth to her baby she returned to the Long Jump pit last year but the comeback wasn’t that easy while this indoor season started with a jump of 6.88m.
At “The Christmas Cup” she landed at 6.94m, an excellent mark which gives the Russian jumper high hopes for the upcoming IAAF World Indoor Championships in Valencia.
The men and women’s Pole Vault were won by Sergei Kocheryanu who cleared 5.70m and Julya Golubchikova who cleared the bar at 4.50m respectively.
In the men’s Long Jump Evgeniy Plotnir celebrated his victory with a leap at 7.79m before stepping up to the Triple Jump and taking another win with 17.02m.
Tatyana Kivimiagi and Svetlana Shkolina cleared the bar at 1.94m in the women’s High Jump while Andreu Epishin won the men’s 60m in 6.69 and Svetlana Nabokina the women’s 60m in a Russian season’s best 7.22.
Dmitriy Forshev and Aleksei Baksheev shared the golden glories clocking 34.67 in the men’s 300m. Svetlana Pospelova was the best woman at the same distance with a 37.26 performance.
It is interesting to mention that 800m Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy took part in a 1000m race. For him it was a kind of a practice and he finished only 4th in 2:24.21 exactly one second off winner Aleksandr Krivchenkov.
European Indoor champion Dmitriy Bogdanov won the 500m in 1:02.08. World Indoor relay champion Natalya Nazarova was the fastest woman at 500m (1:08.52).
World season’s best were registered at the Cup of Moscow in the men’s Heptaphlon by Aleksandr Pogorelov - 6005 points (7.10 - 7.63 - 15.73 - 2.05 - 8.12 - 4.70 - 2:52.97). Anna Bogdanova won all five events among women reaching a total score of 4690 points (8.35 01.81 - 14.15 - 6.33 - 2:15.06).
Nickolai Dolgopolov and Rostislav Orlov for the IAAF