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Russian Winter Athletics Championships in Moscow ended with a mega-sensation. Natalya Spiridonova not only defeated Olympic champion in high jump Maria Lasitskene, but did it with an iconic result of two meters for the discipline. It can be unequivocally stated: a new superstar has emerged in the long-suffering Russian athletics.
Lasitskene spoke to reporters in the mixed zone when the CSKA arena exploded with applause.
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“Took it?!” the Olympic champion didn’t believe it, looking at the screen hanging on the wall where the broadcast was going on. “Two meters! What a smart girl Natasha is!”
br>Such a sincere and touching reaction was all the more pleasant to observe, considering that she had just lost to Natalya Spiridonova at the main start of the winter season. However, great athletes are such because they can appreciate the greatness of a moment where they are not the main characters. And the situation was truly historic. In the Russian women's height of two meters or higher over the past five years, only Lasitskene herself has jumped. Over the past 10 years — Lasitskene and 2012 Olympic champion Anna Chicherova. That's all.
Spiridonova's victory at the Russian Indoor Championships did not become a sensation. This season she has already beaten all her competitors, including Lasitskene. It was Spiridonova who had the best result of the winter — 1.93 meters. But perhaps no one expected that the 21-year-old athlete would now surpass not only her personal best (1.95), but also reach a two-meter height, which is considered not even a grandmaster, but a super-elite one. Even she herself.
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“I didn’t expect and didn’t plan for this,” Spiridonova admitted, looking at the journalists with slightly crazy, but uncontrollably laughing with happiness eyes. — When I jumped to 1.97, the coach said: “We need to set the bar higher.” We decided to install two meters. Until I realize what happened, everything is shaking inside.”
The champion’s shock can also be understood because two days before the start of the Russian Championship she was… in the hospital. Probably, due to the surge of emotions, Natalya did not even remember this in a conversation with journalists after the triumphant victory. On Thursday, her coach Ekaterina Alekseeva told the Pskov Information Agency that the jumper was taken away in an ambulance with suspected appendicitis — just at the moment when she and her student were planning to go to the tournament.
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“Tomorrow we have to fly out to the Russian Championship, Natalya’s stomach started to hurt badly at night. She went to bed and thought it would pass. It was impossible to sleep at night. In the morning I took a painkiller, it didn’t help. In the end they called an ambulance and took her away,” the coach said .
However, everything ended not just well, but incredibly. And here’s another fact that will help you understand the scale of what happened: Lasitskene first jumped two meters, also at the age of 21, then still performing under the name Kuchina. But Maria did this at a time when Russian athletics was still part of the global family. The fact that we now have an athlete who has achieved such a result at the domestic competition, without qualifying anywhere due to exclusion from international competitions and the complete lack of prospects of returning to them in the near future, is probably akin to a miracle.
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Athletics is beautiful because of its geographical breadth: here, there are no such concepts as a specific or non-specific region. A nugget can be found anywhere. Take only high jumpers: Lasitskene-Kuchina — from the city of Prokhladny, in Kabardino-Balkaria, Chicherova — from Belaya Kalitva in the Rostov region, Danil Lysenko — from Birsk in Bashkiria.
Spiridonov is from Pskov. Such sports celebrities as hockey player Sergei Fedorov, skier Mikhail Ivanov come from this city… There were no athletics stars of comparable magnitude in Pskov. Natasha is the first.
Here it would be appropriate to say something like: “Today we saw the future Olympic champion.” But, alas, there will be no Russian athletes at the 2024 Games. World Athletics President Sebastian Coe is categorical. It’s so categorical that you can’t even count on access to international tournaments. But Spiridonova, at least outwardly, is not upset by this.
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“We have high competition in Russia, we have Maria Lasitskene, the girls stay side by side, on the same level. Competition invigorates, you want to jump higher,” Natalya noted after her record-breaking jump.
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Well, they have been trying to kill Russian athletics since 2015, but it lives on. And he doesn’t just live — he gives birth to new stars. There is no doubt that Spiridonova has exactly this potential. It’s not just about the external data that the pretty and smiling Natalya has. It's just that high jumping has such a strong aura of mystery and magic of attraction that the leaders of the discipline are perceived as people who have known Zen. Even if they are categorically gloomy and uncommunicative, as Ivan Ukhov was when communicating with the press, the interest in them is enormous.
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"Will I be able to break the world record? “I don’t know,” Spiridonova admitted honestly. “But today I just didn’t know that I would jump two meters.”
Of course, the question that the champion was asked in the mixed zone was somewhat amateurish and naive . But it was born out of a joy that no one involved in our athletics had experienced for more than two years, since Lasitskene’s mind-blowing victory at the Tokyo Olympics. In sports, forecasts are a thankless task. But at the very least, I really want Natalia Spiridonova to have her Olympics.
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