International Gymnast alerts me to this interview with Ludmilla Korolenko, former coach of Ukrainian 1996 Olympian Liubov Sheremeta. Korolenko now works for the Russian federation as a coach, primarily for the junior team, specialising in beam preparation, and also judges at major international competitions.
There is a lot of meat in this interview if you can get past the Google translate. Korolenko discusses recent changes to the Code, and refutes the idea that judging is subject to deliberate corruption and cheating, preferring to think of controversies such as those surrounding Mustafina's vault valuations as simple errors or misinterpretations, something she says is quite a common occurrence. She also highlights inconsistencies between rule applications in men's and women's gymnastics. Errors in women's gymnastics, she suggests, are penalised twice as deductions are made for poor execution and the move is downgraded. If I read the translation correctly, she feels that the same does not happen in men's gymnastics.
Korolenko moves on to discuss the state of play in Russian gymnastics, highlighting the relative simplicity of determining team and individual competition rankings through start value. In the summer, Komova was number one in the world, but by the time of Rotterdam Mustafina had overtaken her and was ahead of the rest of the world, with American Rebecca Bross second in the senior field. She identifies the 1995-96 born generation of Russian gymnasts as stronger than those born 1991-94, considering the downturn to be attributable to the political and social upheaval involved in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still, she is realistic about Russia's strength in depth, suggesting that America have greater numbers of gymnasts to call upon at the highest level. She also makes reference to the great difficulty of progressing from junior to senior level, considering how much the girls grow during this time and the difficulty of overcoming painful injuries, which is often just too much.
Sadly, many of the gymnastics basics such as dance, once taught as compulsory in Russian gymnastics schools, have fallen off the curriculum, giving the Russians a few problems to sort out in their training later on. Korolenko says she doubts the Russians will ever beat the Chinese on beam. The Chinese team's early preparation for this apparatus is very rigorous and demanding, and I get the feeling that she feels that this work, in particular the stretching, is just a bit too hard for very young girls.
Looking to the future, Korolenko makes reference to Ostapenko's desire to bring through individual girls who will shine, highlighting in particular his work with Maria Paseka, who like Mustafina had been left without a coach. Maria has now progressed to the senior team and is said to be working on a triple twisting Yurchenko vault. Other gymnasts she mentions as important to the Russian team include Tanya Nabieva, Viktoria Komova, Yulia Belokobskaya, Anastasia Grishina and Anastasia Sidorova.
Korolenko also makes reference to the sad decline of the Ukrainian team and the standards of Ukrainian gymnastics in general. It is clear that this gives her a lot of pain. She speaks with great affection of Liubov Sheremeta and Galina Tyryk. Clearly while Russian gymnastics is her current employment, Korolenko still harbours passion for Ukraine and would hope for things to get better in her home country.
There is a lot of meat in this interview if you can get past the Google translate. Korolenko discusses recent changes to the Code, and refutes the idea that judging is subject to deliberate corruption and cheating, preferring to think of controversies such as those surrounding Mustafina's vault valuations as simple errors or misinterpretations, something she says is quite a common occurrence. She also highlights inconsistencies between rule applications in men's and women's gymnastics. Errors in women's gymnastics, she suggests, are penalised twice as deductions are made for poor execution and the move is downgraded. If I read the translation correctly, she feels that the same does not happen in men's gymnastics.
Korolenko moves on to discuss the state of play in Russian gymnastics, highlighting the relative simplicity of determining team and individual competition rankings through start value. In the summer, Komova was number one in the world, but by the time of Rotterdam Mustafina had overtaken her and was ahead of the rest of the world, with American Rebecca Bross second in the senior field. She identifies the 1995-96 born generation of Russian gymnasts as stronger than those born 1991-94, considering the downturn to be attributable to the political and social upheaval involved in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still, she is realistic about Russia's strength in depth, suggesting that America have greater numbers of gymnasts to call upon at the highest level. She also makes reference to the great difficulty of progressing from junior to senior level, considering how much the girls grow during this time and the difficulty of overcoming painful injuries, which is often just too much.
Sadly, many of the gymnastics basics such as dance, once taught as compulsory in Russian gymnastics schools, have fallen off the curriculum, giving the Russians a few problems to sort out in their training later on. Korolenko says she doubts the Russians will ever beat the Chinese on beam. The Chinese team's early preparation for this apparatus is very rigorous and demanding, and I get the feeling that she feels that this work, in particular the stretching, is just a bit too hard for very young girls.
Looking to the future, Korolenko makes reference to Ostapenko's desire to bring through individual girls who will shine, highlighting in particular his work with Maria Paseka, who like Mustafina had been left without a coach. Maria has now progressed to the senior team and is said to be working on a triple twisting Yurchenko vault. Other gymnasts she mentions as important to the Russian team include Tanya Nabieva, Viktoria Komova, Yulia Belokobskaya, Anastasia Grishina and Anastasia Sidorova.
Korolenko also makes reference to the sad decline of the Ukrainian team and the standards of Ukrainian gymnastics in general. It is clear that this gives her a lot of pain. She speaks with great affection of Liubov Sheremeta and Galina Tyryk. Clearly while Russian gymnastics is her current employment, Korolenko still harbours passion for Ukraine and would hope for things to get better in her home country.
Good read, thanks. But I cannot imagine Maria Paseka doing a TTY, I think it would be far better if she worked on a really clean Amanar!
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