The traditional survey, which has been carried out by the Federation of Sports Journalists of Russia (FSJR), identifying top ten athletes, best coach and best team of the year, this time brought a lot of unexpected results.
There lot of new names prize-winners – owners of the ‘Silver fallow deer’ award.
These are the ten best in alphabetical order: Dina Averina (Gymnastics); Alina Sagitova (Figure Skating); Svetlana Kolesnichenko (Synchronized Swimming); Maria Laeckene (Athletics), Alexander Lesun (Pentathlon); Evgeniya Medvedeva (Figure Skating); Evgeny Rylov (Swimming); Sergey Semochkin (Paralympic Cycling); Sergey Ustyugov (Skiing); Alexey Shved (Basketball)
Coach of the year is Yuriy Semin (Football, Lokomotiv)
The team of the year is Spartak, Moscow (Football)
For the first time in decades, our questionnaires were completed by foreign journalists. So the President of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS), the Italian Gianni Merlo, named the world champion in the High Jumping Mariya Lasnitskenу the best. She can beat old record of 2.09m, set by Bulgarian Stefka Kostadinova, back in 1987, he said.
When the voting began, Yuriy Semin was seldom named in the list of candidates. But as the gap between Locomotive, Moscow and more famous opponents from the Premier League increased, Yuriy hit the stride and finished ahead of Eteri Tutberidze, Medvedeva’s and Sagitova’s coach.
Victory of Spartak football team may be explained easily: sports correspondents also root for this team. And FSJR always plays fair and gives Silver Fallow Deer awards only to those, chosen by their colleagues.
Together with our partner, the Russian Olympic Committee, we will try to hold the honoring ceremony shortly after the winter Olympics.
