Swimmer Yana Martynova in Kazan is well known. She used to beat records in Russian and international competitions, represented Tatarstan at the Olympic Games, and now she is preparing new champions in her own swimming school. In her life there were many victories and no less difficulties: injuries, participation in a doping scandal, disqualification ... We will tell about the ups and downs of a famous athlete in an article.
Family and childhood: a short biography
Yana Martynova was born on 02/03/1988 in Kazan. The girl was brought up in a sports family. Her father, Valery Yurievich, is a well-known football player and coach, the champion of the Rubin club in the number of matches held. Mother Tatyana is a volleyball player in the past. Older sister Marina is also a swimmer, master of sports of Russia. It is not surprising that Yana connected her life with professional sports.
When the girl was five years old, her father brought her to the pool, where her older sister was already engaged. At the age of six, Yana fell into the group with Gulnara Aminova, a wonderful trainer and the best specialist in Kazan. In the future, the athlete worked throughout her career. This cooperation has become one of the main components of the success of Yana Martynova. From her father, the young swimmer adopted such qualities as industriousness, perseverance and the desire to win. She admits that dad was always her idol. The girl watched how he devoted himself to football, worked, played with his heart. I saw how the fans admire him, and dreamed of experiencing the same emotions.
At the age of ten, Yana realized that swimming for her was not just a hobby, but a professional sport. From that moment, she began to work fruitfully and prepare herself for a great future.
The beginning of a swimming career
At eleven years, Martynova became a master of sports, and at fourteen - a master of sports of international class. Since 2000, she regularly got into the Russian national team, and in 2002 she made her debut at the world championship in short water swimming, held in Moscow. The swimmer won her first “gold” in the Russian Championship in 2004, during the selection for the Olympic Games. It was a great success to get away at the Olympics at such a young age, and the whole family was very proud of it.
At the games in Athens, sixteen-year-old Yana Martynova was one of the youngest participants. She flew to Greece without a personal trainer, and this added to her difficulties in the fight for medals. The girl did not become a prize winner, but received excellent experience for the further development of her career.
Victory in Russia
Further, Yana won numerous victories at the Russian championships. At the 2007 championship, all valuable things were stolen from a locker room before a swim from the locker room: jewelry, a mobile phone. For the nineteen-year-old athlete, this was a great stress, but she showed strength of mind and went to the start with an even greater desire to win. In the first four-meter race, Martynova won the gold medal and set a national record. Then a new start at a distance of two hundred meters butterfly, and again victory! Thus, Yana showed all her rivals how strong she is.
First world success
In 2007, the swimmer became the second at a distance of four hundred meters at the World Championships in Australia's Melbourne. Subsequently, this distance became the crown for the athlete. On this, the sports achievements of Yana Martynova did not end. A year later, in the same discipline, she won the bronze medal at the European Championship in the Dutch Eindhoven. At the same time, the athlete improved her result by three seconds.
Yana Martynova approached the 2008 Beijing Olympics in good condition. Behind her were already victories and experience participating in similar starts. And the most optimal age is twenty years. In the preliminary swim at a distance of four hundred meters by the complex, the Russian swimmer managed to show an excellent time and set a country record. However, in the final, the athlete could not compete with the leaders and took the final seventh place.
Injury
According to Yana Martynova, her skate is not speed, but endurance in swimming. But sometimes injuries prevent victory. Such a nuisance happened to a girl on the eve of the 2012 Olympic Games. During a training swim in London, Russian swimmer Anastasia Zueva at the finish line accidentally hit Yana Martynova with her shoulder in the pelvic bone. At first, the girl did not appreciate the complexity of the injury and continued training. But soon she felt a sharp pain in the area of the impact and somehow managed to swim to the side.
Nevertheless, the swimmer still took part in the Olympics, because she devoted a lot of energy to training and was determined to win. But the injury reminded itself, and in the preliminary race at four hundred meters by the Yana complex, she took only 24th place, missing the opportunity to fight in the final. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the coach of the athlete Gulnara Aminova was not allowed into the pool, since accreditation was granted only to three coaches of the national team, and Aminova was not one of them. Thus, the swimmer was left alone, and this was not the best way reflected in her psychological mood.
Education
In parallel with the development of a sports career, Yana Martynova studied. In 2012, she graduated from the Department of Marketing and Management at the Financial and Economic University of Kazan and received a manager's degree. The girl did not stop there and soon entered the magistracy of the Institute of Physical Culture, Sports and Restorative Medicine of Kazan Federal University. In 2013, as a student of KFU, Yana took part in the Kazan Universiade. At its crown distance, the swimmer finished first and brought Russia the jubilee hundredth "gold" of student games.
2013-2015 years
In the same year, Martynova went to America for training camps and was very impressed by how the training process in the United States is being built. In the States, her personal trainer was David Salo, a well-known specialist who trained many Olympic and world champions, including Kitajima Kosuke and Rebecca Sony.
In addition, in America, Jana was able to work out with the Hungarian athlete Katinka Hossu, who has always been her rival. Girls of almost the same age and from childhood and junior starts competed against each other, alternating victories. But if Martynova participated in one or two races, Hossu always swam the full program and took with her a whole scattering of awards. This fascinated Yana, and she really wanted to work with Katinka and understand how she achieves such endurance.
In 2015, Martynova was going to take part in the water mundial competitions held in her native Kazan, but another injury prevented her from starting. Like many professional athletes, years of training and competition have not passed for Yana’s health for nothing. She paid for the records with worn neck joints. According to the 27-year-old girl, doctors said her neck joints were like that of a fifty-year-old woman. However, the main troubles awaited the swimmer ahead.
Disqualification
In the summer of 2015, a doping scandal erupted that affected numerous athletes of the Russian team. Martynova found in the doping tests an anabolic substance ostarin, which is banned for use. Yana did not plead guilty and claimed that she had not used such a drug. The girl even passed a polygraph test, and he confirmed that she was right. However, this did not help the swimmer, and she was suspended from all competitions for four years.
As a result, Yana Martynova missed the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Currently, her disqualification continues, it will end only on 07/27/2019. In theory, the athlete has a chance to participate in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. But, according to the swimmer, she had already decided to end her career.
Swimming school
After the disqualification, Yana Valeryevna Martynova for a long time could not recover, it seemed to her that her sports life was over. The athlete was confused and depressed. In 2016, she was offered to conduct a couple of master classes for children. I liked it. In coaching, she saw a new motivation for herself. So the swimmer had a desire to open her own swimming school.
Yana Martynova began coaching in September 2016. Her school called MY CHAMPS is based in the pool of the Kazan sports complex KAI Olympus. Classes are taught using a unique technique that Yana learned when she trained in America under the guidance of David Salo. According to Martynova, this technique is more diverse and easier than Russian, it is better absorbed by children and motivates them to succeed. There are a lot of sparring competitions and game moments, which is very impressive to the pupils of the school. This is probably why MY CHAMPS is very popular in Kazan, many parents tend to give their children there, some come to training even from other cities.
Personal life
Yana Martynova trains children not alone, but in tandem with her husband Dmitry Zhilin. He is almost two years younger than his wife, also a swimmer, an international master of sports, a participant in European and world swimming championships, a champion of Russia and a medalist of the World Cup stages. The lovers have been together for quite some time, but married only in July 2017. Now Dmitry completely helps Yana in a swimming school, together they pass on their professional experience to a new generation of athletes from Tatarstan and Russia.