1st November 2012 12:46
The 2013 European Athletics Indoor Championships will be held in the Swedish city of Göteborg between 1-3 March. Savitskaya ranks third on the European 2012 heptathlon list, behind Great Britain's golden heroine and 2012 European Athlete of the year and her compatriot Chernova, after putting together a total of 6681 points to win at the Russian national championships in June.
The 21-year-old Siberian, who was born and brought up in Krasnoyarsk, went on to finish eighth at the London 2012 Olympic Games with 6452 points.
In London, she showed her Cheboksary result was no fluke when she notched up three personal bests in the track events. Only slightly below-par performances on the second day in the long jump and javelin stopped her being a surprise contender for a medal.
'I have to be selected for the European Athletics Indoor Championships because of my results last summer and I want to compete in Göteborg very much. Now we are laying the foundations for some good results in the winter,' Savitskaya told her local newspaper Our Krasnoyarsk.
'I do not have any complaints about London because I give 100 per cent. I was actually very pleased with my eighth place. I thought I was going to do worse but when I was there, there was a constant feeling of such an incredible high,' added the bouyant Savitskaya.
She will go to Göteborg with a realistic chance of her first medal at a major international championship, after finishing sixth at the 2009 European Athletics Junior Championships and then seventh at last year's European Athletics U23 Championships.
Savitskaya puts these relatively modest performances early in her career down to not always being as dedicated in training as some of her contemporaries, but it's something that she thinks she has now mastered.
'I'm very emotional and I had to work hard to learn how everything fits together. For a good result you should always work hard in training and often you have to do the same thing over and over again, but originally I had trouble with this,' she joked.
Obviously, doing well on home soil at the 2013 World Championships, which will be held in Moscow, is also a major target for Savitskaya in the next 12 months.
However, she is still young enough to contest next summer's European Athletics U23 Championships in the Finnish city of Tampere.
Potentially a thrilling heptathlon contest is on the cards in Tampere as Latvia's 2012 European Athletics Championships bronze medallist Laura Ikauniece and The Netherlands' 2011 European Athletics Junior Championships gold medallist Dafne Schippers as well as Great Britain's 2012 World Junior Championships long jump winner Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who finished ninth, 12th and 15th respectively in London, could be battling with Savitskaya.