European junior Long Jump champion Darya Klishina of Russia is ready for the big league.

Russia's Darya Klishina is now used to causing surprise. At last year's European Athletics Junior Championships in Novi Sad, she broke many hearts among the Serbian supporters of local heroine Ivana Spanovic by winning the Long Jump with a championship record 6.80m, and this year she leads the world indoor rankings.

The 19-year-old Klishina is unbeaten in her two outings so far this year and jumped 6.87m at the Russian Winter meeting in Moscow earlier this month, the second best ever by a junior jumper indoors.

"To be honest, I didn't expect to jump so far (in Moscow)," said Klishina.

"After all, this was my first competition of the season and I did not know how prepared I was.

"Even from my training it was hard to know what the result was going to be as all the technical things I have been working on, have not yet been fully absorbed. I wasn't really thinking about how far I was going to jump, either for better or for worse."

"In Moscow, I probably had a slight advantage because I was on my own track. I'm a member of the CSKA club so I have trained regularly in the stadium, I know every inch of the track. At the meeting, I had my parents and friends there to support me. The only thing that bothered me was the competition went by very quickly. It seemed that I did not have time to recover between attempts, even breath," joked Klishina.

It has still to be decided whether Klishina will be in the team to go to the World Indoor Championships in Doha next month as Russia's team selection will only be made after the national championships next weekend.

However, having won the 2007 World Youth Championships Long Jump gold medal, and also the European junior title last July, there is no doubt that Klishina is capable of coping with the pressure of big events.

"Although I think the pressure in Novi Sad was on Ivana. I remember that I couldn't walk anywhere in the whole city before the Championships without seeing her face, it seemed the whole city was hung with posters of Ivana, and everywhere there were souvenirs with her photo," she reflected.

After winning in Novi Sad, Klishina turned down the chance to go to the World Championships last summer so Doha is likely to be her first experience of a major international championship against senior opposition.

"Last summer, I was completely focused on the European Athletics Junior Championships and gave it all my effort. I achieved what I wanted there, but I was worn down psychologically afterwards," added Klishina, explaining her decision to pass on the opportunity of going to Berlin.

Klishina has been involved with athletics since she was very young, encouraged by the fact that both her parents were athletes. 

"But not at a professional level so I went to dance classes and also played volleyball. At a regular school athletics competition, a coach saw me and invited me to try various events. I did everything, running, jumping, even the Shot Put, but my best results came in the jumps. At first I tried to combine it with volleyball but that was unrealistic. My parents eventually said 'choose athletics or volleyball'," commented Klishina, who seems to have chosen wisely.