Petrov - IAAF Coach of the Year

[BruceFlorman]

The "official" announcement is waaaay down at the bottom.
http://www.iaaf.org/news/kind=2/newsid=42493.html

If I haven't screwed up the link, the image at http://tinyurl.com/yoehpk and the next one show him receiving the award.

Also, evidently something funny happened on the way to the engravers, and here's what he had to say about it:
[quote]11:30 26.11.2007 – Light Athletics
Vitaly Petrov: I was called a Russian coach, but it would have been better yet had they written as my citizenship – World
Yesterday, on November 25th, on the grand evening of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Athletics Gala in Monaco, the "Coach of the Year" award was presented to Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbaeva’s trainer, the famous Ukrainian specialist Vitaly Petrov. After receiving the statuette from the hands of his former student, Olympic champion and still reigning world record holder in the pole vault, Sergey Bubka, Vitaly Petrov commented on his victory to the special correspondent of the Agency of Sport Information "All Sport" in Monaco.

“Best trainer or not the best trainer – all this isn’t so important,â€Â

[altius]

Make no mistake - Petrov is a great man - not just a great coach. We would move forward more quickly if all coaches thought of themselves as coaches of the world and let go of the parochial/ nationalistic, even jingoistic, way of seeing their role.

[BruceFlorman]

Hmmm. It appears the IAAF aren’t the only folks who think Petrov is Russian. Evidently the Russians do too!
[quote]16:00 05.12.2007 – Light Athletics
Tatiana Lebedeva recognized by the ARAF as 2007 Russian Athlete of the Year
According to the results of voting by the delegates to this year’s annual conference of the All-Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF), the senior team coaches and regional representatives, the 2007 Russian Athlete of the Year has been announced to be 2004 Olympic champion and 2007 world champion in the women’s long jump, and indoor world record holder in the triple jump, Tatiana Lebedeva. ARAF Marketing Director Mikhail Butov reported this to the Agency of Sport Information "All Sport".

“Tatiana Lebedeva won by a convincing margin, collecting 168 votes,â€Â