Skip to main content

2009 Yokohama International Women's Marathon Winner Abitova Given Two-Year Doping Suspension

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/olympics/sns-rt-us-athletics-russia-abitovabre8a61ls-20121107,0,2970680.story

Inga Abitova is the second Japanese marathon-winning Russian woman managed by Spartanik RS Inc. this year to have been given a doping suspension, following Tatiana Aryasova who was stripped of her 2011 Tokyo Marathon win after a positive test for a masking agent.  According to the article linked above Abitova will be stripped of all results beginning Oct. 10, 2009, a period which includes her 2009 Yokohama International Women's Marathon win.  If Abitova loses her Yokohama title, runner-up Kiyoko Shimahara (Second Wind AC) should find herself elevated to the winner's position.  

Other athletes on Spartanik's current roster to have won Japanese marathons in the last five years include 2012 Nagoya International Marathon winner Albina Mayorova, 2010 Tokyo Marathon winner Alevtina Biktimirova and 2008 Nagano Marathon winner Alevtina Ivanona.  Spartanik's Kateryna Stetsenko of the Ukraine is on the entry list for next week's edition of the Yokohama International Women's Marathon.  Also scheduled to run Yokohama after the Sept. 6 expiration of her doping suspension is Lithuanian Zivile Balcuinaite, an athlete unconnected to the above management company.

Doping violators Abitova and Aryasova recorded virtually identical splits in their Yokohama and Tokyo wins, negative splitting with the fastest final 2.195 km in the field:

Inga Abitova (Russia), 1st, Yokohama 2009 - 2:27:18
1st half: 1:14:03   2nd half: 1:13:15  final 2.195 km: 7:22

Tatiana Aryasova (Russia), 1st, Tokyo 2011 - 2:27:29
1st half: 1:14:28   2nd half: 1:13:01  final 2.195 km: 7:26

Mayorova and Ivanova recorded a similar pattern, a negative split with the fastest close in the field, in the splits of their Japanese wins, with the added feature of them both running this race plan at PB pace:

Albina Mayorova (Russia), 1st, Nagoya 2012 - 2:23:52 - PB
1st half: 1:13:00  2nd half: 1:10:52  final 2.195 km: 7:20

Alevtina Ivanova (Russia), 1st, Nagano 2008 2:26:39 - PB
1st half: 1:14:40  2nd half: 1:11:59  final 2.195 km: 7:19

Biktimirova ran 1:13:25 for the first half of her 2010 Tokyo Marathon win before slowing in the extreme weather conditions at that year's race.

Other Spartanik athletes at recent Japanese marathons to run the same pattern of splits:

Olena Shurkhno (Ukraine), 7th, Nagoya 2012 - 2:25:49 - PB
1st half: 1:13:00  2nd half: 1:12:49  final 2.195 km: 7:20

Tetiana Gamera-Shmyrko (Ukraine), 2nd, Osaka 2012 - 2:24:46 - PB/NR
1st half: 1:12:49  2nd half: 1:11:57  final 2.195 km: 7:06

Tatiana Petrova-Arkhipova (Russia), 3rd, Tokyo 2011 - 2:28:56
1st half: 1:14:42  2nd half: 1:14:14  final 2.195 km: 7:40

Tatiana Petrova-Arkhipova (Russia), 5th, Tokyo 2012 - 2:26:46
1st half: 1:13:32  2nd half: 1:13:14  final 2.195 km: 7:36

At the 2011 Tokyo Marathon Petrova-Arkhipova's 7:40 closing split became the fastest in the field following Aryasova's loss of her title due to her positive drug test.  At this year's Tokyo Petrova-Arkhipova closed even faster but was only second-fastest over the last 2.195 km behind Ethiopian winner Atsede Habtamu's 7:26 split, while Stetsenko ran 1:13:31 through halfway but faded with a 1:15:07 second half.  

At the London Olympics Petrova-Arkhipova and Gamera-Shmyrko ran as follows:

Tatiana Petrova-Arkhipova (Russia), 3rd, 2:23:29 - PB
1st half: 1:13:14  2nd half: 1:10:15 final 2.195 km: 7:19 (4th-fastest)

Tetiana Gamera-Shmyrko (Ukraine), 5th, 2:24:32 - PB/NR
1st half: 1:13:15  2nd half: 1:11:17  final 2.195 km: 7:03 (3rd-fastest)

Mayorova negative splitted but did not have the closing speed she displayed in her Nagoya win, closing in only 7:43.  Both of Gamera-Shmyrko's closing splits in the races above rank among the fastest ever recorded by a woman.

Despite a DNF in the London Olympics, Spartanik star Liliya Shobukhova is well-known for her fast-closing finishes, including a 6:36 final 2.195 km in winning the 2009 Chicago Marathon.  Shobukhova has run a fast-closing negative split three times, two of them PBs.  All of her marathons until this year featured final 2.195 km splits of 7:05 or better.  

It will be very interesting in Yokohama to see if Stetsenko is able to duplicate the fast-closing PB-pace negative split pattern of the other athletes from the same management company.

Comments

alex said…
I'm not defending the agent, but he is just the middleman. Take a look at the coach and the training group. The other top female runner in that group is Nailiya Yulamanova, also banned for abnormalities in her biological passport. The coach is married to another well known runner who has won Paris, Hamburg, Shanghai and Nagano marathons. Now consider a young woman joining that group and seeing her team mates and role models doping and winning races. What chance does she have of staying clean?

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...