The Volgograd Miracle

The “better half” of Russia’s Olympic track and field squad brought home five gold medals, while the men scored just one. Three of these gold medals were earned by athletes from Volgograd, all of them women.

The secret of the “Volga phenomenon” has yet to be revealed. And it clearly is about more than just creating great athletes. It is about taming Earth’s gravity, about overcoming the very forces of nature.

Tatyana Lebedeva loves the triple jump, but she can do the long jump too. Unfortunately, her success in the triple jump in Athens was forecast and thus doomed, so she resigned herself to a bronze. But she offered a sweet surprise with the long jump, which Russia was not expected to win – Lebedeva first competed in the long jump one year ago at the Moscow Challenge tournament, drawn by the prize money.

“God sees everything,” Lebedeva said. “When I placed second in Sydney, I realized: the Almighty won’t let me win the Olympics for free. I guess I had a mission to accomplish; I had to go through trials and tribulations... to win third place in my favorite triple jump in Athens... Then He must have decided that I passed the test, so it was time to reward me.”

Some said Lebedeva, at 1 m 73 cm (5’ 8”), was not tall enough or long-legged enough to be a long jumper. But they overlooked her iron character, cast in cruel street fights with boys while growing up fatherless in Sterlitamak. “I was a kid of the street,” she said. “But this was exactly what forged me. I really wanted to test myself in sports.”

High jump champion Yelena Slesarenko, 21, made her debut in dancing and only accidentally found her way into athletics. Coach Boris Gorkov taught her to run and do the long jump, but she quickly gravitated to the high jump, and realized it was her calling.

Slesarenko’s progress is nothing short of impressive: one month before this year’s world indoor event in Budapest, her career best was 1.98 meters. Two weeks before the event (at the Russian National Championships), she cleared 2.01 meters. In Budapest, she soared over the bar at 2.04 meters to win the title. Then, in Athens, she won the gold, setting an Olympic record at 2.06 meters.

“It was my passion which helped me,” Slesarenko said. When journalists told her she was the third athlete from Volgograd to bring Russia a gold in athletics, she smiled, adding: “We have a great city we love and are always ready to defend its sports honor. I hope the city will reciprocate and, at the stadium where I train, we will finally see new running tracks.”

Yelena Isinbayeva grew too tall for gymnastics, so her coach in that sport helped her move to where her height would be an advantage – to the pole vault. There, she has risen to become the world’s undisputed female leader in the sport (in September she was awarded the title of Best Female Track and Field Athlete of the Year).

Isinbayeva has had a running competition with Muscovite Svetlana Feofanova, each of them snatching world records from each other. In Athens, their main rival, American Stacey Dragila, failed to clear the qualifying height, so Feofanova and Isinbayeva turned the competition into an all-Russian affair. After Isinbayeva cleared 4.85 meters in a dramatic last-ditch third try, Svetlana Feofanova ordered 4.90 but failed, winning her the silver medal. Then Isinbayeva, in a very relaxed style, cleared 4.91 meters – for Olympic gold and a world record.

Isinbayeva won the World Youth Games just six months after taking the pole in hand for the first time. “I realized right away that she was a major talent,” said coach Yevgeny Trofimov. He said she has “smart muscles – these muscles quickly learn anything new.”

So can a five-meter pole vault be far off? “I already picture this jump,” Trofimov said. “We just need to fix a bit her initial phase and improve her speed and power properties. That will enable her to try more rigid poles. As to the higher phase of the jump, she really executes it flawlessly. Nobody can do this, not even men.”

“I sure could [clear five meters],” Isinbayeva said. “But I won’t do it yet. I am not that rich, and they pay pretty good money for every record centimeter. So, I will take it centimeter by centimeter. There are nine centimeters left.”

– Mikhail Ivanov & Yuri Davydov