at hl e t ic s 09
at hl e t ic s 09
At the tender age of just 16 years the younger Parnov is already the national champion and has won a podium place amongst her contemporaries on the world stage at the Youth Olympic Games. There’ s a big leap from competition between school aged athletes and the best in the Commonwealth, but if nature and nurture are the determinants of one’ s self, Parnov has an abundance of both. Athletics runs in the family. Her grandmother, Natalya Pechonkina, won a bronze medal in the 400m at the 1968 Olympic Games. Her father, Alex, was a pole vaulter with a personal best of 5.82m and almost won a place on the Soviet Union’ s team for the inaugural world championships in 1983, but to be replaced by a then unknown Sergey Bubka. Her uncle, Viktor Chistiakov was a 5.90m vaulter and her aunt, by marriage, Tatiana Grigorieva, an Olympic silver medallist. Add to the fact that Alex provides not just athletic genes and his fatherly support, but as her coach a shrewd athletics mind which has guided Dmitry Markov, Emma George, and most recently and spectacularly, Steve Hooker, to the heights of world pole vaulting, and it would almost be a disappointment if Liz wasn’ t as good as she is.
Image by Chris Lew