KAZAN, July 10 (Itar-Tass) - Anisya Kirdyapkina, who won the 2013 Summer Universiade gold in the Athletics Women’s 20km Race Walk, has told Itar-Tass her victory was just one more step in her preparation for the 14th IAAF World Championships in Athletics due in Moscow in August.
This time Russian athletes gave no chance for race walkers from other countries even to dream of medals. From the first to the last kilometer they led the race earning all places on the podium for the first time in the history of the World University Games.
Kirdyapkina set a new record of the universiades - 1:29:30. Irina Yumanova came second (1:30:41) and Lina Bikulova was third (1:32:20).
“Today everything went the way I wanted, although sometimes it was a bit difficult, there is a surprising raceway, it goes up the hill, it is very steep. But I had luck on my side. To set the Universiade’s record was not an end in itself, now we are persistently training for the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Moscow and my speed could be even faster,” she said.
“I walked controlling time and attentively watching my rivals. At the end of the race I tried to go far ahead to finish comfortably,” Kirdyapkina said.
She said disqualification of Vera Sokolova was rather unexpected for the team.
“We’ve been training together for a long time and I thought that I will have to compete for gold with Vera. But absolutely unexpectedly she was disqualified for violating a race walk style. After this all of us had to keep watch over our race walk technique even more carefully not to lose a medal in team trials,” she said.
“Vera was very disappointed, but I think she will cope with her problems and will show her best race walk at the World Championships.”
Kirdyapkina said from Kazan she with her team will go to Russia’s southwestern resort of Kislovodsk to continue training for the IAAF World Championships.