Akimov biathlete biography. It's a funeral. How Akimova showed real Russian biathlon. When was the last time you were in your native Cheboksary?
Tatyana Akimova was born on October 26, 1990 in the village of Novye Lapsary, Chuvash Republic. The girl was no different from her peers: she did well at school, loved to read and meet with friends. She was also interested in sports. I chose skis for myself. I started using them in early childhood. But pretty soon sport came first in her life. All free time was devoted to him without reserve.
Tatyana Akimova watched with pleasure and admiration the successes of Russian and foreign athletes. When they won the Olympics, I rejoiced with them and most of all dreamed of being in their place.
When Akimova was offered to take up biathlon, she immediately switched from one sport to another, which included the same favorite skiing plus shooting. The athlete’s determination, complemented by considerable hard work, soon yielded excellent results.
Behind the Chuvash biathlete’s back is a children’s and youth sport school named after A. Tikhonov in his native Cheboksary. Started here sports biography Tatiana Akimova. Her personal trainer Anatoly Akimov has been here for more than ten years.
The athlete was first a member of the junior and youth national teams of Russia. But soon she was included in the country’s reserve team. In 2011, Tanya competed at the World Junior Championships and the European Championships.
The biathlete managed to achieve her first significant victory in 2011, when she became silver medalist Russian Championship summer biathlon. This success allowed her to take part in the World Summer Biathlon Championships. A miracle did not happen here, and the athlete from Chuvashia was unable to win medals.
But in 2013, Tatyana Akimova managed to shine at the Winter Universiade in Trentino, Italy, becoming a winner in the relay race and a medalist in individual races.
Unfortunately, the next year did not bring the biathlete a breakthrough: she took part in the World Summer Biathlon Championships, which was held in Tyumen, but performed unsuccessfully. The athlete took 23rd place in the sprint, but only 25th in the pursuit.
But at the very end of 2014, the biathlete managed to show herself with the best side on the Izhevsk rifle. She managed to mobilize all her strength and take 3rd place in the individual race and 5th in the sprint. These victories helped Tatyana Akimova get into the Russian national team for the World Cup, but due to the lack of qualifying points, the IBU was unable to compete. Therefore, the girl was sent to the IBU Cup stages.
In December 2015, the athlete from Cheboksary made her debut at the World Cup in Ostersund. In the sprint competition she started at number 100. Unfortunately, here Tanya faced defeat: in her debut race she took only 83rd place, and came last to the finish line.
The long-awaited breakthrough and triumph came to the biathlete in 2016. And it is doubly pleasant because even Tatyana herself did not expect it. It seemed that nothing foreshadowed such a resounding success. In Canmore, the girl finished only 23rd. In Presque Isle, 19th. She performed much better at the March World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, taking 12th place.
An unexpected victory awaited Akimova in the Czech Republic. In mid-December, at the World Cup in Nove Mesto, Tanya won her first and so far main victory in the sprint.
The biathlete of the Russian team, commenting on her victory, happily shared that today everything worked out for her. For the first time in her sports career, the 26-year-old athlete managed to enter the top ten, beating her rival Dorothea Wierer. This victory turned out to be very important for the Russian team.
At the World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria on February 9, 2017, as part of the Russian team, Tatyana won bronze in mixed relay.
Athlete's height: 168 cm; weight: 57 kg.
Awards and Achievements of Tatyana Akimova
2013 - bronze medalist of the Universiade in the 7.5 km sprint
2013 - bronze medalist of the Universiade in the 10 km pursuit
2013 - winner of the Universiade in mixed relay
2015 - winner of the IBU Awards in the “Rookie of the Year” category for the 2015/2016 season.
2016 - World Cup sprint winner
2016 - World Cup bronze medalist in pursuit
2017 - bronze medalist at the World Championships in mixed relay
2017 - winner of the Military World Games in the 7.5 km team race
2017 - bronze medalist of the Military World Games in the 7.5 km sprint
Presidential Gratitude Russian Federation(December 24, 2013) - for high sports achivments at the XXVI World Winter Universiade 2013 in Trentino (Italy)
International Master of Sports of Russia
On March 20, 2016, the biathlete was recognized as the best newcomer of the 2015/2016 season according to the IBU and received a special prize
She started cross-country skiing in first grade and started biathlon at the age of 12. For some time she combined two sports and became a master of sports in ski racing. The first coach, Anatoly Valentinovich Akimov, did a lot for the athlete’s training, and also supported her financially - he helped purchase equipment. Tatyana speaks warmly about her childhood training and calls those training sessions friendly and partly family-like.
As a junior, she was only able to qualify once for the European Championships, held in Ridnaun, Italy, and took 17th and 10th places there in the sprint and pursuit, respectively. These results allowed her to get into youth team Russia, to conduct the first training sessions as part of the national team. At the junior level, Tatyana demonstrated high speed, but she didn’t always cope with shooting at her main competitions.
The first significant success happened in 2013 at the World Winter Universiade in Trentino - in Italy, Tatyana managed to win bronze medals in the sprint and pursuit, as well as gold in the mixed relay. A year later, on the Izhevsk Rifle, Tatyana fulfilled the selection criteria and won the right to compete at the World Cup and European Championships in Estonia. However, due to the lack of qualifying points, she was forced to start first at the IBU Cup stages.
She held her first race within the World Cup at the beginning of the 2015/2016 season, for which she was preparing as part of the national team. In the first races, she did not show a stable result and was sent to the IBU Cup stages, from where, having won sprint gold, she returned to the World Cup competitions. Her best personal result that season was 12th place in the sprint at the stage in Khanty-Mansiysk. In addition, Tatyana became a participant in the 2016 World Championships in Holmenkollen, where she competed in the sprint, pursuit, individual race and relay.
At the end of the 2015/2016 season, she received the Rookie of the Year award from the International Biathlon Union.
The 2016/2017 season was Tatyana’s first full season at the World Cup stages. In the same season, she won her first victory there: on December 16, 2016, Tatyana won gold in the sprint at the World Cup stage in Nove Mesto. The next day, in the pursuit race, she retained her place on the podium, finishing third.
The Biathlon World Championships in Hochfilzen, Austria brought Tatyana bronze medal in the mixed relay. February 9, 2017 Russian team, for which Olga Podchufarova, Tatyana Akimova, Alexander Loginov and Anton Shipulin performed, became third, losing only to the teams of Germany and France. Tatyana finished the 2016/2017 season in 16th place in the overall Women's World Cup standings.
The Russian biathlon team completed its performances in individual disciplines on Saturday, and there is only one race ahead, the mixed relay. No one made it into the men’s mass start, and for other relay races we simply don’t have enough people. And the women's mass start sounded like a parable: two Russians took first and last places there.
Tatyana Akimova - a person with a reputation as a supposed sniper - missed one of the lines five times and finished the race 30th out of 30 participants. And Anastasia Kuzmina won. The trouble, however, is that all three golds (and a bunch of other medals) of Anton Shipulin’s sister at three (!) Olympics went not to Russia, but to Slovakia.
Now we can no longer find traces of who at one time did not keep young Kuzmina and gave the super-athlete to a foreign, and even not biathlon, state. It would be nice to “deal with and shoot” people who have shown blatant lack of insight and unprofessionalism (c) - but as always, the dock is empty, or rather, Mrs. Collective Irresponsibility is sitting there.
Here's what Kuzmina herself said in one of her old interviews:
“I think that in Russia I would not have been able to achieve a medal. After the birth of a child and a family, it was difficult for me, at that time not yet the number one of the national team and not an Olympic champion, to return. I didn't feel any support. We spent six months looking for someone to help, but in the end, being very disappointed, we went to another country.”
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That's how it is, guys. Kuzmina did not have any patrons in the regions or among venerable specialists, they did not push her, they did not believe in her talent - or maybe they deliberately turned a blind eye to it as a result of, frankly, corruption schemes, the desire to make money on completely different athletes. And she just left. In my opinion, there is a real malfeasance on the part of those who were responsible for the present and future Russian biathlon. And instead of a top biathlete, we got a team of mediocrity.
And Kuzmina’s words: “In Russia I could not achieve a medal” are another verdict on Russian biathlon. They make you think: how many new Kuzmins, how many Russian Fourcades have we quietly lost.
Some will say that there is no demand for Tatyana Akimova, one of two Russian biathletes at the 2018 Games. But in my opinion, there is - she was preparing for the Olympics, she came and shows exactly what she is capable of. But it turns out she’s not capable of almost anything. Although about a year ago, when Akimova performed successfully at the World Cup stages, it was she who was considered by many to be the leader and hope of the women’s team. Yes, her teammates were not invited to the Games - however, biathlon is first and foremost an individual sport, and no one stopped Akimova from fighting the same way as skiers do, also deprived of a whole group of stars.
The great Anfisa Reztsova may well be biased (her daughter competes on the biathlon team), but it’s hard to argue with her statement about Akimova. Tatyana, according to Reztsova, does not want to work on increasing her speed and is simply ruining her own chances. The time of snipers in biathlon has passed: the speed of the legs and skis decides, and we see that even with a zero, Akimova barely gets into the top twenty in the sprint... And as they say, even here at the Olympics there are enough problems with the athlete’s behavior: let’s say, she demands special conditions for herself and procedures without which he “can’t cope.” Apparently, the procedures still did not help.
However, who knows. If Akimov had moved to Slovakia, Slovenia or Bulgaria a couple of years ago, perhaps we would have been faced with a multiple Olympic champion, shooting without missing and hovering over the ski track. And the Russian Nastya Kuzmina at this moment would sadly end her career somewhere at the IBU Cup, quietly regretting that she did not leave her homeland in her youth.
Dmitry SIMONOV
OLYMPIC FLAME
Which was the leader of the team last year and even won the World Cup race, has significantly slowed down this season. In the Olympic uniform of an athlete from the United Arab Republic, she performed incredibly dullly. Not afraid to criticize the coaches in Pyeongchang, Tatyana suddenly disappeared from the biathlon horizon, missing the World Cup in Kontiolahti. The day before it became known that she would not go to Oslo either. The public was outraged: is this really a punishment for having a long tongue?
Not really. Akimova, apparently surprised by the wave of interest in her absence, hastened to explain on her Instagram page that the reasons were quite trivial.
"Thank you all for your support. I really got sick. I want to explain the situation. I deliberately missed the stage in Kontiolahti and was preparing to go to Oslo. But, unfortunately, I got sick. I missed several days of training due to fever. Apparently some kind of virus. There is no need to look for any other reasons here. I’m doing everything to recover and get back on track as quickly as possible, but it takes time. I don’t want to make any predictions yet. I sincerely wish good luck to our entire team at the upcoming stage.”
But this explanation does not mean at all that there is no conflict between the athlete and the coaching staff of the women’s team. It would be strange not to assume this, taking into account latest performances Akimova. Here are some quotes:
“How do we communicate with coaches? To be honest, our coaches did not call me or write to me even once during the Olympics. I’m telling it like it is.”
“It’s psychologically very difficult when there is no trust between the athletes and the coaching staff. I don’t want to look for excuses for an unsuccessful performance, but a series of changes in coaches does not lead to anything good.”
“This season has shown that operating principles need to be adjusted, to put it mildly.”
It is likely that the conflict is internal in nature, and Akimova and Sergei Konovalov have not yet had the opportunity to talk openly. After the Olympics - the main start of the season, which revealed obvious problems between the athlete and the coach - they have not seen each other yet. But Konovalov’s “answer” turned out to be unconvincing: “Akimova said this season that we don’t know her and that we are not preparing her. But some moments are forgotten very quickly - the year before last, when I worked as a senior coach, she was presented with an award best newcomer according to the IBU." Bringing up an award from two years ago is a “grass was greener back then” technique that does not give the coach any points in a verbal battle with an athlete.
Anfisa Reztsova, who acted as a fortuneteller, also added fuel to the fire: “Where did Akimova show herself well? She shot one stage at the World Cup, and immediately after that she was made a leader. What kind of leadership can we talk about if she almost always loses with her move? Again, the girl is not meant to be great biathlete with this move." It’s interesting that such jabs from prominent figures do more damage not to the athletes, but to the image coaching staff led by Konovalov. However, it is still biathletes who still have to make excuses for every failure after the race, who cannot even silently pass by the mixed zone without this gesture collecting hundreds of dissatisfied comments on the Internet.
If the grandiose changes vaguely promised by someone big and strong in the RBU are implemented, then the Akimov-Konovalov tandem, with which both the athlete and the coach are dissatisfied, will disintegrate. The only question is which of them will remain in the team.
Tatyana Akimova, biography, sports career and whose personal life is presented in this article, is a famous Russian biathlete. She is the winner and prize-winner of the World Cup stages, as well as the winner of the World Championship.
Biographical information
Tatyana Sergeevna Semenova was born in October 1990 in the capital of Chuvashia, Cheboksary. As a child, the future biathlete was not much different from other girls - she studied well, loved to walk with friends and read books. Tatyana also loved sports, especially skiing, which she was fond of from early childhood. It was they who became the girl’s companions for many years.
While studying skiing, Tatyana Akimova always watched the performances of biathletes with interest. Therefore, when she was offered to switch to this sport, she agreed without hesitation. And very soon her hard work, determination and perseverance brought her first successes.
Beginning of a professional career
While studying in Cheboksary at the A. Tikhonov Youth Sports School under the leadership of V. M. Pavlov, biathlete Tatyana Akimova soon began to get involved in republican and international competitions. She began to be called up to the junior and then the Russian youth team.
The first successes came to the 21-year-old athlete in 2011. At first she competed at the world and continental junior championships, but, unfortunately, was unable to take prizes. But Tatyana did not give up: at the Russian Summer Biathlon Championship she sensationally became one of the winners.
This success allowed her to join the team that competed at the World Championships in this sport. However, at the competition in the Czech Nove Mesto, Tatyana was unable to repeat her achievement.
First international successes
The turning point for biathlete Tatyana Akimova was 2013. During performances at the event in Trentino, Italy, Russian athlete made a large number of journalists and experts talk about themselves.
First, she became third in the sprint, and then repeated her achievement in the pursuit. A few days later, Tatyana, together with Sergei Klyachin and Alexander Pechenkin, won the Universiade gold medals in the mixed relay.
In 2014, the athlete was not able to particularly please her fans. At the World Summer Biathlon Championships in Tyumen, Tatyana Akimova did not perform very well, finishing only in the third ten. Only at the end of the year was she able to prove herself at the Izhevsk Rifle commercial tournament. Here Tatyana became third in the individual race and fifth in the sprint.
Performances in the IBU Cup
After such performances, Tatyana Sergeevna Akimova was able to make it into the Russian national team, but was unable to compete at the World Cup stages due to the fact that she did not have qualifying points in IBU tournaments. Therefore, the team management decided to send Akimova to compete in the IBU Cup.
In the 2014/15 season, she made her debut at the stage in Duszniki-Zdroj, Poland, where she finished sixth in the sprint. At the next race, Tatyana was already fourth. These results were enough for the young athlete to make her debut at the most prestigious world biathlon competitions.
Performances at the World Cup stages
Tatyana Akimova entered the World Cup circuit for the first time at the end of 2015. At the first stage in Ostersund, Sweden, she participated in the sprint race. Unfortunately, the debut was unsuccessful: having started in number 100, Akimova ended up in the ninth ten with three misses.
At the next stage in Hochfilzen, Tatyana took 66th place, and in Ruhpolding she scored qualifying points for the first time. The Russian athlete was thirty-second in the sprint, and forty-ninth in the pursuit. Akimova improved her performance at the stage in Canmore, Canada. Here she became twenty-third in the sprint.
At the next stage in Presque Isle, Tatyana participated in the relay race for the first time. Unfortunately, the debut was not a success here either: the Russians took only seventh place.
The most successful start for Akimova was the stage in Khanty-Mansiysk. Here she became twelfth in the sprint and fourteenth in the pursuit.
The following season, only improved results were expected from Tatyana Akimova. And she didn’t delay it: at the very first stage she became fourth in the mixed relay. But the real sensation occurred in the Czech Nove Mesto. Akimova first sensationally won the sprint race, and a day later she became third in the pursuit race.
Tatyana spent the entire 2016/17 season relatively smoothly. In almost every individual race she was in the points zone. She made another “shot” at the World Championships in Hochfilzen: Tatyana Sergeevna Akimova became a bronze medalist in the mixed relay.
On the eve of the new biathlon season and Olympic Games the Russian biathlete is assigned big hopes How coaching staff national team and ordinary fans. According to the athlete herself, she will do everything possible to please them with her success.
Personal life of an athlete
The Russian biathlete, previously known under the name Semenova, has been listed in all official protocols as Tatyana Akimova since the summer of 2015. It was then that she married Vyacheslav Akimov, who is the son of her coach.
Tatyana's husband is also a famous biathlete, who became the European junior champion in 2011. Now he competes at the IBU Cup stages.
Free from training process And during competitions, the Akimov family often appears in public, but even more often they can be found fishing.
Tatyana also opened an account on Instagram. Here she puts her photos both from training camps and competitions, as well as her own photo shoots for sports and