by Alfonz Juck
Darya Klishina, photo by PhotoRun.net
MOSCOW (RUS): Long jumper Darya Klishina has written in the Moscow Times about how the ban on her federation has affected her and other Russian athletes. The only Russian track and field athlete to compete in Rio 2016, wrote in part: “Russia has already lost a lot of professional athletes whose careers are over because they can’t just wait for the issue to be resolved. If you don’t compete, you don’t get paid. It’s like being fired. How are these athletes supposed to live?”
RunBlogRun opines: Early in 2017, Loren Seagrave, coach of Darya Klishina (and Tianna Bartoletta) told me that once Darya understood her new leg speed, she would return to large jumps. Whoa. Tianna Bartoletta told me Darya could handle a 4x100m leg, she has that kind of speed. The London WC LJ was one of the finest competitions in recent memory. Not about huge jumps, but seven meters is always a big deal and doing it under pressure of a championships shows that Darya is back. Watching her and Sergey Shubenkov was quite sad. One appreciates that they love their country and are proud of the country. I am not sure that the IAAF had a choice with such massive cheating in her home country.
