Tatyana Chernova

Chernova is the favorite to win the heptathlon at the Olympics, and a gold medal would put her in extremely exclusive company. She has already won world championships at the youth, junior and senior competitions, and there are only four track and field athletes who have won titles at those levels and an Olympic gold: Jamaica’s Usain Bolt and Veronica Campbell-Brown, Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva and New Zealand’s Valerie Adams. A gold medal would also put Chernova in the company of her mother, Lyudmila Zenina, who topped the podium as a member of Russia’s 4x400 meter relay team at the 1980 Moscow Games. Chernova made her Olympic debut in 2008, taking bronze with 6,591 points - 142 back of gold-medal winning Nataliya Dobrynska. She had originally finished fourth, but a disqualification of Lyudmyla Blonska for doping upgraded her to the medal stand. She finished eighth at the 2009 world championships, but scored a career-best 6,880 points at the 2011 worlds to take the gold.