Diana Podgorbunskaya

Happy birthday to Russia’s Diana Podgorbunskaya, who ran the fastest race of her life three days ago, at home.

On 24 July, at the Kalininets Stadium in Yekaterinburg, Diana ran **54.95** over 400m at the Russian Championships. It is a lifetime best, it came at a senior national championship, and it came on her own city’s track, three days before her twentieth birthday, in the heat that had athletes struggling all week. There are worse ways to spend the run-up to a birthday.

She has been building toward it in company. In June last year, on the same Kalininets track, she took **bronze in the 4x400m at the Russian U20 Championships** as part of the Sverdlovsk Oblast quartet with Ksenia Druzhinina, Margarita Khankina and Yana Lyashina, in a championship that drew more than eight hundred athletes from fifty-four regions. That group keeps reappearing together on Russian entry lists, indoors and out, which is what a real regional squad looks like from the outside. In February she ran 56.67 over 400m indoors at Volgograd and went 3:43.69 in the short-track relay with the same kind of company around her.

She trains in Yekaterinburg at the Yunost sports school and with SC Luch, coached by Yelena and Yevgeny Masaev, a coaching pair working out of the same programme. Her Instagram bio is two words long and both of them are the name of her city.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is a long way from anywhere and it keeps producing quarter-milers anyway., with the 400m still entirely in front of her.

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