Ksenia Afanasyeva - confidence, errors and support

Lupita translates this Kirov.net interview with the Russian women's team captain Ksenia Afanasyeva.  The twice Olympian discusses here the mistakes made in the team final, and how she has supported her young and talented team through all the excitement - and challenge - of an Olympic Games.

Ksenia, as the most experienced gymnast in our team did you give support to the other girls? 

Yes, I tried to help all the girls and I think I achieved that. But I won’t tell you how I did it (it’s a secret). [Laughs] In fact, I gave them support. If I saw that someone was becoming very emotional, I calmed her down.

Landing on your knees was an accident?

It’s lack of work and a mistake from my part.

"I think, I speeded up and didn’t do what was planned.  It’s not even a technical error.  I didn’t wait and breathe out; I decided to start without a pause."

You’re the only one who didn’t cry. Is your nervous system stronger?

No, you didn’t see me. I’m also a human being and I suffer. I may be more experienced than the other girls. In Beijing I went through a much more difficult situation. I came back home with no medal. Now we won a medal, though not the one we wanted to win.

Do you think that today it was possible to beat the Americans?

Of course, it was. We could have fought till the end. We surrendered too early. Nastia made mistakes; I made mistakes, and all this accumulated.

Were you very nervous during the competition?

It may sound strange, but I felt less nervous than in the rest of the competition. I feel nervous in general.  Now, I felt less nervous, perhaps because we were performing as a team, all together. The coaches gave us support and there we a huge delegation to support us. This made things easier.

Who needed more support: Мustafina or Komova?

Both are strong, psychologically and physically.  Perhaps, after her injury, Aliya is now less strong physically than Vika. 

Did you have the impression that Mustafina fell off the beam because she was scared?

I don’t think she was scared. Anything is possible! She may have felt that something was not OK and decided to make a pause, to think. It’s very difficult to explain.

How are you going to celebrate the silver medal in the Olympic Village?

"We’ll arrive there, we’ll laugh together, call our parents, our friends and go to bed."

Do you pay attention to the venue or are you so concentrated on the result that you don’t see anything around?

When I was not going to perform, of course I paid attention to the audience. We got good support. But later, when I was ready to perform on an event, I was left with the apparatus.

We thank Megaphone for their help in the organisation of the interview.