Valentina Rodionenko - The Judges Scare Us, the Yankees - Not So Much!

Lupita has provided the following translation of an interview from Sovietski Sport (18th April).

Valentina Rodionenko, coach with the Russian and Soviet teams for over 30 years, celebrates her 76th birthday in September this year.  Picture courtesy of RGF.

Valentina Rodionenko, Russian national coach, tells us that the composition of the team that will fight for gold against the US is already known as far as three members are concerned: Aliya Mustafina, who missed one year of gymnastics due to a severe injury (although in Penza, Aliya competed and won), Viktoria Komova, who placed second at the world championships, whose tears in Tokyo for a lost medal were considered a personal tragedy in Russia, and a new name: Anastasia Grishina.

-   We will be leaving for London on July the 21st. It’s no use arriving earlier.  Vitaly Smirnov, from the Russian Olympic Committee, thinks it’s better to arrive earlier.  We are better off here. If we have to rest, we have saunas, apparatus. In this sense, Round Lake is no worse equipped than any clinic. It’s impossible to travel with all this equipment. In England we competed at the World Championships and the European Championships since the last Olympics. We already know the place.

-    The Americans decided to do it differently.

– Acclimatisation! That’s it. We can fly to London in three hours during the summer. And we don’t need to train with the Americans.  We don’t want to…  The more time you spend at the Olympics, the more this affects your nerves.  Any waste of the nervous energy doesn’t have good consequences…

– Are you scared of the judges?

– We are scared of them, – answers frankly Valentina Rodionenko. – We have to fight against the American team. There is only one team that can beat us today: the USA. I repeat: today! And unfortunately we are weaker at vault. But we are scared of the judges. What can we do? Scared or not, we have to continue to work. To be better. So that the judges cannot savage us.

– Now, with hindsight, how do you feel about what happened with Viktoria Komova at the World Championships in Tokyo?

– She gave the judges grounds for them to take away points.  And .033 of a point decided her fate. We cannot be at the same level.  We have to be better.  The judges exaggerate our small mistakes.  Аnd they do the opposite with our rivals.  The same error can be penalized in different ways.  And when the judges’ alliances begin, the game is on.  Do you think they couldn’t have been harsh on Mustafina in the All Around competition in Rotterdam?  They could have been.

– And did they try to be harsh?

– Of course.  But Aliya was so much better than the rest.

– What do you do so that Mustafina or Komova don’t think that the judges can do whatever they want to them, so that they don’t throw in the towel?

– The girls know everything, – says Aleksandrov. – They will not be performing for the first time; they know the pressure that is awaiting them.  They are not happy, of course, but they know that they have to fight anyway and not give any ground.  The most important thing is not to give any ground.  If you perform every routine at your level, you win.  Yet, when you have alliances between judges abroad, they can influence the result and they don’t respect the rules.

– What are the “alliances between judges” that play a part?

– Recently we competed at the Pacific Alliance in Seattle, Rodionenko laments – Canada, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand…they all worked together.  This transatlantic alliance doesn’t support anyone except the US.  China’s scores dropped in Seattle.  We did not compete with our first team.  We knew that they would savage us.  With what we saw there, with all the judges game-playing, I personally was stunned.  We will see what happens at the Olympics. Seattle proved that we have to be prepared for anything.  It’s no reason to surrender beforehand and without a fight!

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