February 6, 2008

The indoor athletic season in Russia will finally hit full swing with the national indoor championships to be held this weekend – 8-10 February - at the Vladimir Kutz Arena in Moscow.

30 titles at stake

30 championships will be crowned over the weekend, with the events divided into three main groups.

There are evident leaders in the first of them. But the rivalry in this first group is tough and the results are expected to be high. World record holder Yelena Soboleva and her opponents are expected to create a fierce battle in the women's 1500m. The Olympic High Jump champion Yelena Slesarenko is flying very high this winter but the opposition is likely to be very strong. The silver medallist in the Long Jump at the Athens Olympics, Irina Simagina, is in tip-top form but she'll be strongly opposed by some difficult-to-beat company.

The second group is the one where several athletes are still fighting for leadership. In the men's High Jump, Andrei Silnov, Ivan Ukhov and Yaroslav Rybakov are jockeying for position to be the domestic No. 1. Evgeniy Lukkyanenko, Igor Pavlov and Pavel Gerasimov are doing absolutely the same in the men's Pole Vault. The same picture appears in the women's 60m, 60m Hurdles, 400m and 800m, while men are struggling for the supremacy at 400m.

The third group conisists mostly of the men's events where there are unfortunately no leaders and the results are sub-par. But still hope does exist that in the Olympic year new names will emerge.