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'Head and intellect is very important' - Anastasia Sidorova 2008 Podcast

11 year old Anastasia Sidorova and her coach Olga Sagina give an interview as one of a series of Podcasts to be found on the website of the Bellahouston Gymnastics Academy in Glasgow, recording the visit of gymnasts and coaches from the Olympic Reserve School in Rostov on Don in 2008.  Anastasia provides an outline of the daily working life of an elite Russian gymnast, pretty predictable in its content.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of time for school in her busy schedule!

The interviewer points out to Anastasia that her understandably rather stock answers might be influenced by the fact that her coach was standing behind her!  (Never mind the fact that she was only 11 ...)  Coach Olga Sagina, who previously has worked with 2000 Olympian Elena Produnova, added that Anastasia's simple responses were typical of a champion gymnast.  Good attitude and work ethic define success in gymnastics, as much if not more than physical talent.  And while Anastasia is an excellent competitor, she did not immediately appear as the most talented gymnast in a trio of girls recruited the same year.  'In our sport, head and intellect is very important' she explains.

I seem to remember Gavrichenkov saying the same about Shushunova, going back to the mid-1980s - good old Soviet work ethic, or is it simply the reality of competitive gymnastics wherever you go?  Along with stories of champion gymnasts' 'difficult characters' (Andrianov/Mustafina), though, today's Russian Gymnastics PR and rhetoric provides intriguing echoes of their past.

Sagina appears separately in an interview, joined by Lia Fudimova, Director of Choreography who has formerly worked with Natalia Yurchenko and Elena Produnova.  Director of the School, Vladimir Fudimov, was also interviewed for this project.

A gallery of pictures recording the visit can be found here, and apparently a DVD of a workshop delivered by Fudimova and Sagina at the School can be purchased online.  A thoroughly interesting resource.

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