RDC2017: Ekaterina Nekrasova and Evgeny Kuznetsov crowned first gold medallists

The Russian Diving Championships was opened with the women’s 3m springboard event. Ekaterina Nekrasova from Saint Petersburg topped the podium with 305,80 points. Olga Kulemina from Penza claimed silver (298,00), and bronze went to Elena Chernykh (292,75) from Voronezh.

Kristina Ilinykh and Ekaterina Nekrasova took the lead after the preliminaries, and Maria Polyakova built up her lead after semifinals but finals took a completely different course.  Kristina Ilinykh, master of sports of international class and winner of international events dropped out of the medal hunt, so did Maria Polyakova. Ekaterina Nekrasova, on the contrary, managed to win thanks to the confident performance of her difficult programme. She edged her teammates from the Russian National team at the last moment.

“I am very pleased to win, this is my first victory at the Russian Championships. I’ve been diving for a while  and I always compete among the best, but it’s my first victory and, frankly, I can’t believe it! I did my best today, I think that’s the key  to my success,” Ekaterina said.

Silver medalist Olga Kulemina thinks that she wanted to win too much and it let her down.

“It seems my nerves failed me. Apparently, I wanted to win too much. I was pretty ready to the tournament, we’ve been training specially for the national championships.”

Kulemina admitted she will try to win gold in another discipline.

Women’s event was followed by the men’s 1m springboard, where Evgeny Kuznetsov from Stavropol won the title with 402,40 points. Iliya Molchanov, Moscow finished second (385,65) with Sergey Nazin from Orenburg Oblast settling for bronze (382,85).

The winner shared his joy to win, but noted that main events are only to come.

“1m springboard is a training discipline I’ve been doing with the same programme for long now. No need to reinvent the wheel here since there’s technically no way to perform something difficult. The most important discipline in Kazan for me is 3m individual and synchro springboard. I’ve been training for them long time and I think Ilya and I will nail it.”

Silver medalist Iliya Molchanov said he’s pleased with the result since the competion at the Russian Championships is high as usually.

“I am happy with the result, silver is the first and I hope not the last success for me at the national championships. 1m springboard requires concentration, accurate and cool performance of dives. I’ve learnt the programme with my coach a long ago and I am happy everything turned out well. I am second behind Evgeny Kuznetsov and there's a long way to go to reach his level.”