Skip to main content

Tanya Nabieva - World Champion, and so much more

By
Click to play this Smilebox slideshow
Create your own slideshow - Powered by Smilebox
Photo slideshow created with Smilebox

17 year old Tanya Nabieva has been a gymnastics champion for many, many years, always enthusing her friends and audience with that special brand of cheeky determination and flighty innovation that could only be hers.

Tanya is a fearsome competitor and an excellent gymnast - her gold medal from the 2010 World Championships in Rotterdam, and her silver medal on bars at last year's Tokyo World Championships, were her highest honours, but she also contributed to the team's success at the Europeans in Birmingham in 2010 and won many, many medals at national and junior international level. She has always been so much more than a gymnast - full of joy and sadness, all of it always expressed so clearly. And such a good, generous friend to her team mates, especially Aliya, with whom she shares a special bond.

A painful back has troubled Tanya since her earliest days as a senior. Her Olympic preparations were disturbed by this and, most recently, by a leg injury incurred in the very last few days before team selection. Unable to train at her usual intensity, Tanya could not regain the level of difficulty for which she had become so renowned. She has been selected as a reserve but most likely will not compete in London. The most recent pictures of her show her in a reserved but contemplative mood. Tanya must have known her chances were limited, but it can't be easy to train for an event all your life, only to miss out by the tiniest margin.

The Smilebox is my way of wishing Tanya best of luck for whatever she chooses in the future - whether to continue training and support her team next year, or to concentrate on her studies at the Lesgaft Institute, or do something completely different. It is pure sentiment.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous15 July 2012 at 16:14

    Aww that was such a touching slideshow :-) Love that photo with Aliya and they're both doing peace signs. So cheeky! Wishing Nabsy all the best for her future!

    ReplyDelete
  2. M15 July 2012 at 21:28

    Really nice montage. Nabs gymnastics might be messy at times, but she had an interesting personality. I didn't know she was studying at University now. That's great for her.How am I the last to know these things? lol

    Wishing her the best in whatever she does.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Russian gymnasts to apply for neutral status

By
Gymnastics has lost some of its appeal over the past few years, whilst Russian athletes have been out of competition.  This might be an unpopular opinion, but it reflects the reality of international gymnastics without around a quarter of its leading protagonists.  The international competitive field has not raised its performance in the absence of Russia's leadership; gymnasts from the top ten or fifteen have floated upwards in the ranks to fill gaps in the medal placements, and we see mediocre performances gaining gold, silver and bronze medals.  Gymnastics has lost some of its imagination and vision without Russian athletes. This doesn't detract from the efforts of the world's best gymnasts.  Gymnastics quite simply needs the special abilities of Russian athletes to provide competition for our international contenders and drive the sport to ever greater things.  In particular, artistry has been almost entirely lost without Russian athletes to provide a good e...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Paseka for Russia in Berne

By
Barely two weeks will elapse before the WAG European Championships begin in Berne, Switzerland, and the news we had been fearing has been confirmed : world vault gold medallist Maria Paseka is  off the Russian team while she nurses a back injury.  This leaves Russia significantly weakened for the coming competition, with co-star Viktoria Komova also missing from the line-up.  It is a little disappointing, but it seems the right decision to rest the gymnasts so that they can be at their best when and where it really matters. Who will replace Paseka?  Valentina Rodionenko says that the youngster Natalia Kapitonova, who trains in Penza, has been chosen on the basis of her solid performances at national championships.  Well, we will have to wait and see - these announcements often turn out to be unreliable.   I personally would prefer to see the dynamic Seda Tutkhalyan be given a chance at this level, but Kapitonova has certainly shown herself to be more reliab...
41 comments
Read more

Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics

By
Svetlana Boginskaya, 15 years old, with her medals from the Seoul Olympics Nico translates the latest interview with gymnastics legend Svetlana Boginskaya, during a recent visit to her home country of Belarus. Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics, so now I ask for forgiveness from everyone who came in contact with me. The National Olympic Committee of Belarus held a press conference with three-time Olympic Champion in artistic gymnastics, Svetlana Boginskaya. The meeting was devoted to the 25th anniversary of the Olympic Games in Seoul. In South Korea the Belarussian won two gold medals in the team competition and vault. As a gift to the Olympic Hall of fame, the famous gymnast, now living in the United States, donated one of her trophies that she won at the 1990 European Championships and a pennant for Best Female Athlete of the USSR in 1989. How happy we were when we could share with such stars as Boginskaya, Scherbo, and Ivankov,...
12 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more