RIA Novosti Roundup - Sochi Medals; World Championship Sales; Olympic Pole-Vaulter to Retire

Out of This World: Sochi Champions to Get Meteorite Medals

Some gold medal winners at the Sochi Winter Olympics are set to be rewarded for their out-of-this-world performances with extra medals embedded with meteorite fragments, Russian officials said Wednesday.

The special medals are on offer to athletes who win their events on February 15, 2014, the one-year anniversary of a meteorite strike that injured 1,600 people, smashing windows and causing other damage in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Chunks of that very space rock are to be chipped off and inserted into the medals, Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin was quoted as saying in a statement.

"We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events," Betekhtin said.

Several scientific expeditions collected the meteorite shards, which were found to be formed from common chondrite.

Seven sets of medals are on offer on February 15: in the men's 1,500 meter speedskating, the women's 1,000m and men's 1,500 short track, the women's cross-country skiing relay, the men's K-125 ski jump, the women's super giant slalom, and men's skeleton events.

In total, a record 98 sets of medals will be up for grabs in 15 sports at the Games, which run February 7-23, 2014.

Ticket Sales Booming for World Athletics Championships in Moscow – IAAF

A wide-ranging promotional blitz for the upcoming world athletics championships in Moscow has boosted ticket sales to the point where more than 80 percent of the total available for each of the nine days of competition have been sold, the International Association of Athletics Federation said in a statement Tuesday.

The IAAF, which announced the figures on its website, said the final weekend had been sold out but did not reveal the total number of ticket purchased thus far for the August 10-18 event. Luzhniki, the 78,000-seat host stadium in downtown Moscow, will have a reduced capacity of 35,000.

"Since the beginning of July, thanks to enhanced promotional campaigns on television, radio, in the press, with billboards throughout the city and most recently, on the Moscow metro … we have seen a real surge in ticket sales," general secretary Essar Gabriel said.

IAAF president Lamine Diack caused a stir in early April when he criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for inadequately promoting the world’s second-biggest track-and-field event after the Olympics. He said he had noticed a dearth of television commercials advertising the competition, compared with the number touting the recently wrapped Kazan Universiade and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

The new sales numbers should relieve anxiety among organizers that the championships would be poorly attended, an embarrassing prospect for first-time host Russia, which has not staged a major athletics competition since the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

As recently as June 7, total ticket sales were lingering around the 44,000 mark, a less than five-percent increase from where they stood on May 17, and more than 100,000 fewer than the number reportedly sold at the 2011 championships in Daegu, South Korea.

Record-Breaking Pole-Vaulter Isinbayeva to Retire After Championship

Two-time Olympic polevault champion and world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva announced Tuesday that she would retire after the world championships in Moscow next month.

The 31-year-old made the statement immediately after winning the Russian nationals with a leap of 4 meters 75 centimeters.

"My career will finish 100 percent at the world championships," Isinbayeva said. "For me it will be a nostalgic moment, I should get pleasure from this performance and I will try to show the best I can."

She is competing for a seventh world gold medal next month in Moscow, where the championships will be held from August 10 through 18.

After winning bronze at last year's London Olympics, Isinbayeva said she would chase another Olympic medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but first wanted to have a child.

She recounted on Tuesday a conversation she had had with her fellow pole vaulters on the topic.

"They said: 'How is this happening? You said you'd stay until Rio.' I answered: 'No, I'll be 10 years older than everyone there, so you do it yourselves. Continue my work."

Isinbayeva set her first world record in 2003 and has held the overall pole vault world record unbroken since 2004. She set the current record at a Diamond League event in Zurich in August 2009, jumping to 5 meters 6 centimeters.

Last year, she set her final record, an indoor world best of 5 meters 1 centimeter in Stockholm.

She won the Olympic Games in Athens 2004 and triumphed four years later in Beijing.

Russian Athletics Federation chief Valentin Balakhnichev told R-Sport that he would welcome Isinbayeva to join his team or even replace him as the country’s top athletics official.

"I think Lena Isinbayeva is such a great athlete that I’m eagerly waiting for her to work with us at any level," Balakhnichev said. "If she wants to be the president, let her be the president, I will support her in this decision."