Kazakh parachute jumper Elena Borisova won gold at a recently held large-scale Russian competition on landing accuracy in Tumen.
Borisova, who is an ex-servicewoman of the Karaganda airbase and the wife of the chairman of the Karaganda Federation of Parachuting, showed the best result not only among women but also outperformed the men. She was awarded a brass cup.
“This is the first time in the history of this competition a female became an absolute champion. What is more important for us is that the winner is from Kazakhstan,” said Borisova’s coach and husband Viktor Buryachenko.
Elena Borisova is an active skydiver with 30 years of experience who has made more than 3,000 jumps.
“Years of training have its effect, as your intuition starts working better. Moreover, you learn to analyse weather conditions. Usually, a young athlete estimates his jump on paper. I need just to take a look to realise what I have to do. One of the biggest challenges is unexpectedly changing weather conditions you have to adjust to while you are on the fly already. Even if you have calculated your jump beforehand, it can happen that as long as the aircraft is gaining altitude, the wind has already changed its direction and you have to cope with it. During competition, athletes are nervous, which also affects the landing accuracy. We say, the winner is the one who beats his fears,” explained Borisova.
Borisova also noted that the weather conditions were difficult for the competition. Despite the fact that the competition took place in Siberia, it was very hot, so that all the moisture of the marshy terrain started to evaporate and this impeded parachutes from falling properly. The landing target was only two centimetres in size.
“Once, the target was five centimetres big. This time we have only two centimetres target point. But this is a world competition,” she said.
Borisova also won the event three years ago.
