Irina Privalova -Appraisal of Her 400M Hurdles Olympic Success

Vladamir Paraschuk

Formative Processes
Vladmir Paraschuk, Privalova’s coach outlined their approach for her highly successful transition from one of the world’s leading female sprinters to Olympic champion at 400m hurdles in one season.

Paraschuk placed great emphasis in Irina’s early sporting history as the foundation of her highly adaptive qualities within track and field athletics. The development of both co-ordination and the ability to read situations were fostered through swimming, handball and speed skating – at which she became national 300m champion for 11 year olds and thus demonstrated the high levels of explosive leg power at her disposal. However, special mentioned was made of the high level of parental support received in her formative years, most notably a specially constructed sports complex including ropes, nets and steps for Irina by her father which honed her co-ordination and stability skills.

Irina’s initial experiences of track and field were in Pole Vault [purely for fun ] and soon after multi events. Paraschuk, who in 1986 became Privalova 4th coach spent a two year process in deciding which event to target, with her multi event talent at High Jump, Long Jump and he hurdles exciting much interest from the Russian event coaches. It was Paraschuk’s conviction that Irina matched and potentially surpassed the qualities he so admired in the Dutch Surianamse Indoor world champion Nellie Cooman, that decided the focus on the sprints at which she broke onto the world stage.

[Her shorts sprints career include being former European 100m record holder at 10.77 (1994); the 60m Indoor World Record (1993); Olympic 100m bronze in 1992; World Championship 200m silver in 1995 and bronze in 1993, as well as three World Indoor titles; at 60m in 1991, at 200m in 1993 and significantly for the latter move to 400m hurdles at 400m in 1995]

Event Choice
The idea of looking at the 400m hurdlers as an option for Irina for the 2000 Olympics, occurred from their experiences in the 1999 Seville World Championships where re-occurring achillies problems prevented Irina from challenging for medals. In considering what alternative challenges Irina could turn her talents to, Paraschuk dismissed the intensity of the Jumps and the 100m hurdles as being similarly high injury risk events.
Candidly, Paraschuk admitted that he envisaged the women’s Olympic 400m flat event being dominated by Freeman and Perec with potential 48.5 capacity, whereas with the leading performers at 400m hurdles running around low 53 seconds [and Privalova’s already established sub 50 second 400m flat potential] this event did not look quite as formidable. However, it was not initially a finalised decision but they formulated plans to look at the 400m hurdles, with - if development did not occur at the desired rate - the potential of running a 21.7 200m to challenge Marion Jones a fall back option. The choice of 400 hurdles was also, Parachuk stated, a move with calculated ‘surprise effect’ with Irina’s more experienced rivals in the event not fully knowing what level of performance she was in his mind capable of. The Russian Federation was appraised of the plan and agreed to keep the move to 400m hurdles a secret for as long as possible.

2000 Training
During the early part of the winter Paraschuk decided to utilise Privalova’s former sprint hurdles experience when a multi eventer to re-acquaint and further develop her technical skill levels , with sprint hurdling work indoors [including an impressive 8.16 60m hurdles clocking in January]. After the Indoor season the move was then made to 35m spacing hurdling work. Although no real work had previously been undertaken on her non –dominant lead leg, continuing use of low intensity 1 and 2 stride hurdling over eight to ten barriers as a pre-training exercise quickly built up technical ability in this aspect. Paraschuk his expressed gratitude to the many Russian hurdles coaches who had given then advice as to how to approach the event

Privalova’s first run to hurdle 8 on the 400m hurdle spacing was undertaken in late February in Brisbane. With the target of running 15 strides to hurdle 8 – 22 strides to the first – she ran 40.3 for the first 300m of the 400H. From here they decided to establish touch down targets to run 53 seconds, although Parashuck played down as coincidental that this indeed proved to be a time good enough to win Gold in Sydney.

The decision to train in Australia was partly to facilitate the development of the 35m space cadence given the severity of the Russian winter and partly to rehearse the experience of coping with the long flight and adjustment of going to Australia in preparation for the Olympics later in the year.

In training little race distance hurdle training was under taken. Throughout the winter only one run to hurdle nine, and three runs to hurdle eight were undertaken at various stages of the training year as test sessions to evaluate the structure of her stride pattern. Paraschuk does not believe that hurdling over 400m – 450m is beneficial in that it incurs stresses upon t he athlete that take did not sit with optimal recovery parameters of their training schedule.

Paraschuk stated that much of the winter’s training structure for the 2001 season was not far removed from how they normally approached speed endurance for a 100/200m campaign. [such training had already brought her a 49.83 400m time as far back as 1993] The majority of their workouts were at 300m, but often including hurdles [to H5]; occasional 400m repetitions were undertaken with the last two hurdles in place with a 25m check mark to adjust her approach into to hurdle nine. Greatly stressed throughout this was the process of lengthening Irina’s stride, but wind direction was never a compromising factor in these sessions, as they knew of the reports of how windy Sydney was likely to be and therefore that they had to be prepared for what the wind conditions might be on the day.

The main envisaged difficulties they faced were potential effects of racing against high level competitors on Irina’s effort distribution [especially in light of the their plan to race infrequently] and secondly the demands of running rounds in championship situation especially as there was a calculated desire not to markedly increase Irina’s training volume.

The latter of these issues was partially addressed through using other athletes [males?] to simulate competitors, whilst the former concern was rehearsed by running the first round of the 100m in the Russian championships, prior to the two rounds of the 400m hurdles.

In this meeting, her first 400m hurdles, Irina ran 54.21 seconds with a 22 stride approach to the 1st hurdle, 15 strides to H6, and 16 strides to H10. But this was a pattern that they were only planning on using initially. She had by this stage demonstrated the ability to run 14 strides between hurdles, but only with so much effort that it would cause too much fatigue over the latter hurdles. However, as the training volume decreased and her sharpness increased 15 strides soon became cramped for her running cadence.

Privalova’s 2000 Season
27th Jan 60H 8.16 2nd Moscow
12th Jul 400H 54.49 1st Moscow
24th Jul 400H 54.74 1st Tula National Champs Heat
25th Jul 400H 54.21 1st Tula National Champs Final
18th Aug 400H 54.06 1st Monaco Golden League
24th Aug 400H 54.52 1st Moscow
26th Aug 400M 51.63 1st Moscow, Kuts Memorial
24th Sep 400H 55.89 1st Sydney Olympic 1st Round
25th Sep 400H 54.02 1st Sydney Olympic Semi Final
27th Sep 400H 53.02 1st Sydney Olympic Final

The strategy they envisaged would bring a 53 second clocking was 21 strides to H1, 14 strides to H5, 15’s to H8 and 16 to H10. This pattern was first rehearsed on August 2nd and first implemented in a race at Monaco on August 18th, Paraschuk said that this strategy – showing that a 14 stride pattern could be effectively used at the highest level - was deliberately kept covert until late in the year, to preclude any of Irina’s rivals from having much time to try to copy it. The plan worked well despite the occasion leading to a over exuberant start on Privalova’s behalf [22.7 at H5], the 54.06 victory over a strong field announcing her genuine Olympic credentials

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The Olympics went very smoothly from their point of view. 15 strides from H5 to the finish was considered feasible, but of a higher risk and thus sacrificed for reliability and safety, and thus the previously planned pattern implemented in the final. Paraschuk felt that given a more races, Privalova could have run a World Record, but the absence of any outstandingly quick rivals in 2000 and the covert nature of how her season unfolded, resulted in them pursuing a strategy confident of it’s execution and ability to make her figure strongly in the Sydney final which ultimately gave them a fairly emphatic victory.

The Future
Paraschuk believes the event still to be relatively underdeveloped, hoping that a time of below 50 secs would be possible [!! – Ed note: in other lectures some details were confusing in translation - is this one of them?]. Parachuck stated that he believed athletes such as Perec and possibly Hemmings - if they could successfully restructure their races to harness their flat speed potential - could optimally run below 51 seconds.

Initially Irina was to spend the 2001 season predominantly attacking the 400h World Record, however, recent injury had forced the abandonment of the year, and future plans were to include a build up to attempt to capture the Olympic title at 800m at the 2004 Olympics and her immediate future now lies in developing locomotive, cardio vascular and physiological aspects towards this end.