Elizaveta Subbotina

Happy monumental birthday to Russia’s Elizaveta Subbotina, who changed events and went under a minute for the 400m hurdles in the same season.

At the Russian U20 Championships at the Central Stadium in Kazan on 27 June, Elizaveta ran 1:00.47 over the 400m hurdles. The next day she was part of a 4x400m that went 3:44.20. Last August she had taken silver over the 400m hurdles at the St Petersburg Championships.

The interesting thing is where she came from. Through 2025 she was a flat 400m and 800m runner, with 58.20 and 2:17.86 to her name from Krasnodar in May. The 400m hurdles is not an obvious next step from either. It is the event that asks a 400m runner to keep a stride pattern intact through ten barriers while the last hundred metres does what the last hundred metres of a 400m always does. Athletes usually take two or three seasons to stop losing time to it. She has gone straight to the edge of sixty seconds.

Her rank has moved with her: first-class athlete in February 2025, Candidate Master of Sport by the U20 Championships this February. She trains at Sport School of Olympic Reserve No. 1 in the Nevsky district of St Petersburg, under a coaching team of three — Kalina, Pantyukhina and Burovtseva, who are credited together on everything her club posts about her — and she spent last spring at the altitude camp in Kislovodsk, which is where Russian middle-distance and hurdles athletes have gone to build a season for sixty years.

New event, new rank, under 1:01, and.

С днём рождения, Елизавета! Желаю здоровья и счастья на долгие годы, и ещё много быстрых барьеров впереди. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇷🇺