Olympic cross-country skiing champion Veronika Stepanova in her column on , she recalled how even at school she intended to earn the main start of her career in the future.
At the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, the Russian team consisting of Natalia Nepryaeva, Yulia Stupak (before marriage – Belorukov), Anastasia Kuleshova (before marriage – Sedova) and Anna Nechaevskaya won 4 bronze medals in the ski relay × 5km. At the Beijing Olympics in 2022, Stepanova, along with Nepryaeva, Stupak and Tatyana Sorina, became Olympic champion in the relay.
– Five years ago, the photographer asked: “What is your dream?”
In fact, he asked this question to each of the 11 “B” classes of secondary school No. 8 in the city of Yelizovo. Before graduation, it is customary to take such photos in an album. Maybe you had one too?
The suggestion to name the dream took me by surprise. Saying “going to college” or “getting into the national team” didn’t seem ambitious enough to me, or anything like that. Dreaming like this: “I want to become an Olympic champion in cross-country skiing!”
Around this time, our daughters last became Olympic champions in 2006, and frankly, that felt like a very long time ago. Something like a legend from a distant and glorious past. True, the Pyeongchang Games have just ended, where our skiers won several medals at once, they came very close to gold …
These Games, I, a new master of ski sports, of course, watched them from and to. Nepryaeva, Belorukova seemed to me some kind of absolute celestials, Olympian goddesses.
What a thrust with simultaneous movements! What frequency of movements! And how it descends at high speed, you see?! I absorbed every element and tried to repeat something on the track the next day. It turned out average – in cross-country skiing you can’t run at 17 like Olympic medalists run, even over 100 meters. There are no muscles, no coordination after thousands of hours of training.
To imagine that I would race with the heroines of 2018 on the same team was arrogance. I was lucky – I have it, – wrote Stepanova.
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
