Irina Yatchenko of Belarus wins the women's discus throw (© Getty Images)
In Paris last summer, Irina Yatchenko of Belarus proved that even at the age of 37 it is possible for an athlete to recover their best form of more than 5 years back.
In the opening round of the World Championship women’s Discus final, throwing a distance of 67.32m Yatchenko produced her best distance since 1997 (68.32) to beat her two great Greek rivals Anastasia Kelesidu and Ekaterini Voggoli, and take her first international championship gold medal.
Yatchenko came seventh in the 1991 World Championships and her personal best of 68.94 was set the following year. It is hard to imagine that then she ever conceived that she would need to wait 11 years and participate in a further five World championships before she achieved her most desired victory. Yatchenko's career has exemplified the virtue of patience.
Yatchenko was born at October 31, 1965 in the village of Kostiukovo, near Gomel. Her parents dreamt that their daughter would be a great musician but from the beginning she hated her music lessons, she wanted to do something more active. She preferred playing volleyball, and swimming.
The move to Moscow
At 13 years-old, she left her village and began studies at a sports school in Gomel, and from the first days there she became a Discus thrower, at which discipline the coaches promised her a great future. At 17 years old she showed a best of 50.72m and in 1988 her discus flew for first time over 67m and landed at 67.44.
Largely as a result of her improvement she joined an elite training group in Moscow.
The Paris World champion says that this move to the national soviet team school helped her development very much, as there she learned the secrets of training from the great discus throwers of the past and became the true product of the famous soviet discus school.
Family support
In the difficult transitional years for the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s, her Moscow life finished. She returned to Minsk and married her old friend, the leading Soviet hammer thrower Igor Astapkovitch, the three time World and twice Olympic medallist. They now have an 8 years-old son Anton. They act like a small team helping each other. Irina is particularly glad that Igor does so much of the work at home when they return in the evening after training!
In most people’s eyes it is Astapkovitch, with all his energy and support, that has made it possible for his wife to stay in the sport for so long, overcoming some very critical moments in her sports life.
Yatchenko in recent seasons has also been inspired by the performances of her older compatriot Ellina Zvereva, who at 39 years of age won the Olympic title and the following year came second at the age of 40 at the 2001 World championships! On the former occasion in Sydney, Yatchenko was the bronze medallist, while in Edmonton she could only finish 10th with 59.45. Zvereva’s two medals at the time were an inspiration to Yatchenko, proving that age did not matter.
Irina, who is now 38, and her husband Igor, 41, are now looking forward to Athens and their next Olympics, and they remain intensely patriotic. Sometimes during the hardest moments of their careers they were on the edge of leaving Minsk for Russia but they were always determined to stay on in Belarus out of love for their country.
