Skip to main content

Media link : interview with Svetlana Khorkina, Sovietski Sport

There is an interview with Svetlana Khorkina here.

The article includes some lovely pictures of Khorkina in her current life as a Russian State Deputy, including one shot with Alina Kabaeva. If I understand the translation correctly, Khorkina's political responsibilities include a specialist interest in the Committee of Youth.

She comments with pride on the achievements of the Russian team this year and identifies closely with Mustafina. She echoes Rodienenko's concerns for the future of Russian gymnastics, however, highlighting the shortage of coaches, and the corresponding poor rate of pay. Today's gymnastics is 'all bent legs', and lacks complexity. She suggests that Code changes after 2012 should be brought about, to encourage greater complexity in exercises, as well as better quality of performance.

On a broader front, she suggests that the Russians need specialist legal sports representation to confront problems of unfairness she perceives, such as Mustafina's revalued vault in Rotterdam and her own unfortunate experience with the vault table setting at the 2000 Olympic Games. Khorkina says that the Russians also need access to better specialist sports healthcare, including nutrition.

Khorkina speaks with great affection and respect of her late coach, Boris Pilkin. She is a proud and happy mother in her private life and appears to manage to juggle the demands of political and home life quite effectively.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aliya Mustafina - I competed as best I could

Picture credit RGF Aliya speaks in Sports Express http://news.sport-express.ru/2014-05-18/699607 I am very pleased with my performance today, I don't know what the judges didn't like about my bars, but I didn't ask them ... I did my routine fairly well without serious error. On beam I didn't have the start value but I received the highest execution score.  We will try to fix that before the World Championships. Considering the problems I had with my ankle, I think I performed to the optimum at the moment.  I did everything I could. I'm not  the least bit sorry that I performed here -  Very glad that I could help the team. I think my presence made things easier for the girls.   It is very difficult to compete at such serious senior competitions for the first time.  Of course they were very worried.   But I'm sure that with time they will learn to cope easily with their nerves (smiles). 

The State of the Art - Gymnastics in 2013

Just picked up Peter Aykroyd's 1987 book  International Gymnastics: Sport Art or Science?.  Seeing it reminded me that gymnastics is in a constant state of flux and change; its identity has been subject to debate and conflict since the earliest days of competitive gymnastics, well before it existed in the form we recognise today.  I want to try to talk about the state of the sport today, how it compares to past models, how it arrived at this point, and what are the questions arising. I make no apologies for publishing the picture comparisons on this page, which were created by Lifje.  Some have seemed to find them rather challenging in the past, but they are not airbrushed or altered in any way.  Yes, the pictures are purpose selected for the sake of comparison, but they express a truth about the direction the sport has taken over the past few years.  They are not so much about Russia versus America as artistry versus athletics.  I do not pretend...

UPDATE 23/9 - Russian WAG team for Nanning confirmed

Daria Spiridonova will compete at her first World Championships this autumn.  Picture : RGF Natalia Kalugina has confirmed the Russian team for Nanning : Aliya Mustafina, Maria Kharenkova, Tatiana Nabieva,Ekaterina Kramarenko, Alla Sosnitskaya, Daria Spiridonova.  Reserve : Polina Fyodorova Here is a paraphrased translation of a comment by Natalia Kalugina on her Facebook page : 'Aliya has confidence in competition and she is, kind of, a coach to this team.  In Europe she succeeded in this role and she has told the coaches that she even liked it. The main fighting force will be Kharenkova, Sosnitskaya and Spiridonova.  Accordingly, the strongest apparatus will be beam (Marina Bulashenko With God!).  The Chinese women, of course, have been known to win that apparatus, but if one falls, they all fall.   Alla Sosnitskaya could compete in the vault final, and - in theory - on the floor. On bars, of course, Russia will probably lose to the Chinese women, but the...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more