Sunday, May 27, 2012

Darya Klishina and Superb Senora

I began to feature notable female athletics stars in my main blog, hurdler49, to promote the mostly underrated sport. In July 2010, I wrote about the upcoming Russian long jumper Darya Klishina Дарья Клишина . In a few months' time, her popularity shot up exponentially - and so did my blog hits. Darya is both tremendously talented and possesses super-model looks. Although she has yet to win a world title or an Olympic title, her popularity has skyrocketed dramatically.

Read: "Track Beauty of the Week - Darya Klishina Дарья Клишина"
   
Photos from IAAF and Life

I started Superb Senora as an offshoot of the original Track Beauty of the Week feature. This time around, I'll be writing about talented women from sports other than athletics in a tone that's respectful of the fairer sex. Darya, in a sense, started it all. 

Read: "Darya Klishina: The Next Big Track & Field Star
   

Darya has had a stellar junior and youth career. She topped the World Youth Championships in 2007, registering an impressive mark of 6.47m. She improved dramatically in the subsequent years, as shown by her splendid performance at the 2009 European Junior Championships. Darya flew 6.80m, beating hometown favorite Ivana Spanovic. 

In the junior all-time list, the Russian is second only to the great Heike Dreschler.

Read: "Darya Klishina Дарья Клишина on Trans World Sport"

   
  Photos from Rusathletics.com and EAA
Klishina was propelled into the mainstream in 2011, when the Russian topped the high profile European Indoor Championships in Paris. Darya added the European U23 title for good measure, setting a personal best of 7.05m. Unfortunately, Klishina was hobbled by an ankle injury at the latter parts of 2011. She only managed a sub-par 6.50m best leap at the Daegu World Championships, way below her personal best of 7.05m.

Read: Darya Klishina Дарья Клишина leaps 6.80m, wins European Indoor Long Jump gold

Darya underwent ankle surgery after the world championships. Her strong showing at the 2012 World Indoors, where she finished in fourth place (6.85m), is a strong signal that Klishina is on the fast track towards full recovery - and further forays beyond seven meters.

Read: London Olympics Long Jump Preview

The battle for the London Olympics gold medal will be a tough one, especially with the classy Brittney Reese in the field. A healthy Darya, however, would be a sight to behold. Despite her injury, Klishina has shown signs of maturity as she moves up the senior ranks.

A podium finish is a strong certainty, but Darya Klishina might just snag the Olympic gold!

5 comments:

  1. I totally agree with these statements: If Darya is certainly a very beautiful and graceful athlete; she is above all insanely talented. Considering her track record as a young prodigy (starting with 6,31m at 15!!), unseen for a very long time in her sport, she may be quoted as the best athlete of her generation. Of course she has now to confirm at a world level, with strong competition from American girls, and Russian as well (Kucherova has set a 7,03m in Sochi on Saturday). But we have to notice that, despite her difficulties in the winter season as she was recovering from a serious injury, Darya is still high in the charts : ranked n°2 for London by Track&Field.com, and n°3 in the current world ranking at All-Athletics.com. Moreover, with her natural ability to catch the media attention, Darya is certainly the one who could bring female athletics to a whole new level of popularity, and she is fully aware of that. So we’ll keep crossing fingers and support her for the weeks, months and years to come.

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    1. Indeed! I really think and feel that she'll win an Olympic medal this year. Go Darya!

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  2. Erratum : Kucherenko (and not Kucherova !!)

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  3. She looks really awesome! After I saw her photos here http://goo.gl/jXJly I am her biggest fun and checking for new photos : ))

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  4. For Darya's fans, here is a dedicated "Darya on the track" YouTube channel with videos and a large set of slideshows from her competitions : http://www.youtube.com/user/dasha2012able

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