Russian high jumpers clear the year’s best

The Russian athletics season has got underway with the annual Moscow High Jump Cup. Male high jumpers have already made quite an impact with the highest leap of the year so far.

Ivan Ukhov and Andrey Tereshin have both cleared 2.34 metres.

The competition featured a number of the country's up-and-coming athletes.

Even though Olympic champion Andrey Silnov wasn't on show, 2000 Olympics High Jump Champion Sergey Klyugin said there was a strong field.

“There are some very talented high jumpers on show here today. Ivan Ukhov and Andrey Tereshin have the highest jumps of the year so far, while there are also a number of former World and European Junior champions taking part,” Sergey said.

Finally, Ivan Ukhov took the honours in the men's event, and Tereshin eventually crashed out of the competition at a disappointing 2.24 metres.

Ukhov failed to get 2.30 metres on all three attempts, but still won beating Aleksey Dmitriev on the count-back.

“It's just my second competition of the year, so I'm really happy to have come second. I got close to clearing 2.30, so I think there is still plenty to come once the season gets into full swing,” Aleksey Dmitriev said.

The women's event saw a showdown between two high jump rising stars. Svetlana Skholina and Viktoria Klyugina both have a personal best of 1.98 metres. However, it was Klyugina who came out on top with Skholina failing to hit the 1.94 mark.

“I was jumping just a couple of days ago, so I felt a little tired today. There I managed to clear 1.98. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get it right today,” Klyugina said.