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As she had done in earlier years, Irina Privalova started 1995 with a
superb indoor season. At Madrid, on 9 February, she won the 60m in
6.92sec, equalling her own world record, and then on 19 February, at
Lievin, she set the season's fastest time of 22.10sec in the 200m,
setting a new European indoor record. Despite these outstanding
performances at the shorter distances, Privalova elected to only contest
the 400m at the World Indoor Championships in Barcelona. Privalova won
this race easily, in 50.23sec, the season's best time, and the fastest
time run at this distance indoors since 1984.
Despite this success in
the 400m in the World Indoors, and her win at the same distance in the
World Cup the previous season, Privalova did not compete in the 400m
outdoors during 1995, preferring to concentrate on the 100m and 200m.
Compared with the ambitious program of four events that Privalova
undertook at the 1993 World Championships, she only contested the 100m
and 200m at the 1995 Championships held at Gothenburg in August.
Privalova easily won her first and second round heats of the 100m on 6
August (see photo above), and then the following day, she won the
bronze medal in the final in a time of 10.96sec.
In the 200m, she won
the silver medal in 22.12sec, narrowly losing to Jamaican Merlene Ottey,
who recorded the same time. At the end of a long season, Privalova
competed in an international meet at Johannesburg on 23-24 September,
where she won the 100m in 11.01sec on the opening day, and was
victorious in the 200m the day after. Amongst her many successes in
1995, she lowered her personal best in the 200m to 21.87sec, when
finishing second to Gwen Torrence (USA) at Monaco on 25 July. (Ron Casey)
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