KINEMATIC INDICATORS OF COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY OF THE WORLD’S AND RUSSIA’S LEADING HURDLERS IN THE 400 M

The target setting of the Ministry of Sports and the Olympic Committee of the Russian Federation at the present period is the participation of our Olympians in the competitions of the next summer Olympics-2028. The suspension of Russian athletes from participating in international competitions since 2015 has somewhat reduced the motivation of domestic athletes for targeted training, which resulted in a gradual de- crease in competitive results in almost all athletics disciplines. However, sooner or later, Russian athletes will enter the international arena and significant efforts will have to be made to maintain their previous leading positions in many athletics disciplines, including hurdling, where our women hurdlers were in leading positions at various times in the de- velopment of world athletics. The purpose of the study was to analyze the differences in the kinematic parameters of the competitive activities of the world elite hurdlers and do- mestic leaders in the 400 m hurdles in terms of the indicators of the competitive activities of athletes in recent years. The research methods included the analysis of video materials from international competitions, Russian championships, the world and the Olympic Games in the period 2021–2025 using video analysis software “Dartfish”. A comparative analysis of the indicators of competitive activity of hurdlers made it possible to single out the indi- cators of the technical readiness of athletes, according to which recently there has been a lag of domestic hurdlers from the rapidly progressing leading athletes in the world in running a long barrier distance. The parties to the special preparedness of Russian hurdlers have been identified, limiting the growth of competitive results of athletes at this distance. Domestic hurdlers specializing in the long barrier distance lag behind the elite group of runners in such indicators as the speed reserve, the number of steps in all sections of the distance, especially in its final part. Lower indicators of the distance speed of Russian hurdlers are associated with a shorter running step length in all sections of the distance with the same pace indica- tors of running steps as the world leaders, which in our opinion is primarily due to the lag of Russian hurdlers in speed and strength preparedness. At the same time, no reliable between-group differences in the time parameters of overcoming obstacles were found in athletes of two groups.