17th April 2012 07:31
Following her 60m hurdles bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul last month, Belarus hurdler Alina Talay plans to be on the podium again at this summer's European Athletics Championships.
'I will compete at the European Championships in Helsinki. I will try to produce a result that is not worse than in Istanbul,' commented the determined 22-year-old who hails from the north east Belarus city of Orhsa but who has lived in Minsk since 2009.
She is part of a group coached by Viktor Myasnikov that also includes several of the country's other top hurdlers such as Maxim Lynsha and Yulia Balykina.
After the galling experience of getting disqualified in the 100m hurdles semi-finals at the last European Athletics Championships in Barcelona, since the start of 2011 Talay has proved adept at exceeding everybody's expectations, included sometimes her own, on the big occasion.
She finished second at the SPAR European Team Championships in Stockholm last summer, finishing ahead of several better-known athletes and then upset the form book to take the 100m hurdles gold medal at the European Athletics U23 Championships the Czech city of Ostrava.
'Winning the European under 23 gold in Ostrava has been the beginning of my career as a top-class hurdler and now I want to carry on my success in Helsinki,' she added.
Just a week after her continental triumph last summer, Talay flew across the Atlantic and won her first global honour when she took the 100m hurdles gold medal at the World Military Games in Rio.
However, that was sadly to prove to be the end of her season.
'I got injured in the heats in Rio. In fact I only just qualified for the final running 14-something in the heats but then I got some treatment and was able to win in 12.95.
'However, the injury spoke for itself and made the decision that I would not to go to the World Championships. I might have made the semi-finals there but I decided there was not much purpose in going there to do that.'
With how last summer finished at the back of her mind, the effervescent Talay was hesitant about what to expect in Istanbul despite a busy winter which saw her have 10 races before she arrived in the Turkish city but she needn't have worried.
'The Championships were remarkable. I didn't expect that everything would work out so well. I had hoped that I might make the final but neither my coach or nor the team head coach made this a hard target.
'However, everything came together rather dramatically. In the first round, the US champion Kristi Castlin and Jamaica's Vonette Dixon didn't finish because of the situation with the gun. In my heat, I was in lane six while Castlin was in the seventh lane and Dixon in lane eight. They thought that it had been a false start.
'I was slow out of my blocks but at the first hurdle, I saw that they were not to my right but also saw everyone else was going so I just thought to myself that I'd better carry on running.
'With those two gone, then final started to seem achievable and when I won my semi-final, only then did the idea of a medal cross my mind.
'However, after the semi-finals I started to get a bit nervous. In the 100m hurdles I would have felt more confident, but the fact that I got a medal and went under eight seconds twice is something that I could have only dreamed of a few months ago and couldn't run at all due to a foot injury,' she reflected.
Another goal for Talay this summer is to make a big improvement on her 100m hurdles personal best of 12.87 which has stood since 2010.
She needs to run under 12.80 to qualify for the Olympics but has set her sights much higher.
'I'm out to attack the Belarus record of 12.66 (which has stood to Lidia Yurkova since 1990); I should be able to run 12.60,' commented Talay, with the confidence that a medal on the global stage imbues.
The 2012 European Athletics Championships will be held in Helsinki from 27 June – 1 July.