Valentina Rodionenko, Aliya Mustafina and Viktoria Komova - Sovietski Sport/Komsomolskaya Pravda press conference

There is masses of press coverage at present as the results of the Olympics are digested. At an international level, the three candidates for the FIG Presidency are making their bids. Read about this at the All Around.

In Russia, much noise is being made by Valentina Rodionenko. As usual, she seems oblivious to the impression her less than measured comments make on international observers - and her gymnasts. Lupita has made a partial translation of a press conference transmitted earlier this week. I should add that Mustafina and Komova handle themselves wonderfully.

I have yet to see evidence of any competition for the Rodionenko's family job at the head of Russian gymnastics and with Valentina fronting the operation, there seems little prospect of a change in PR policy.



Rodionenko and Mustafina: The best gyms are CSKA and Dynamo.

Komova: in London we made mistakes and we even feared we wouldn’t be medallists. When we saw the results, we cried with joy.

Mustafina: we thought that the men hadn’t competed very well and so we had to perform well for them.

Rodionenko: I want to add something. The gap to the Romanians and Chinese teams was huge. The result was painful because we saw that the girls could have fought for gold. In spite of their mistakes, our girls were stronger than the Romanians and the Italians (?).

Journalist: Specialists think that at these Olympics psychology played an important part.

Rodionenko: I don’t think so. The Olympics is the main competition. Everybody waits for four years. And there’s the pressure of the audience. They supported the Americans as loudly as the British girls.

It’s not about psychology. Here there was Anastasia Grishina’s lack of experience. She told us later that she had problems. Aliya is an experienced gymnast. She’s a fighter. When you are in the position of the runner-up, it’s always difficult.

Journalist: Girls, tell me about your Olympic dreams.

Mustafina: I didn’t have any.

Komova. During the competition I dreamed we had won gold and we were all happy.

Journalist: Rhythmic gymnasts have been given freedom [by their coach Irina Viner] after the Olympics. Did you receive freedom after the competition?

Komova: we only had time to go to Bosco’s, we danced. I’m now in Moscow and I haven’t had time to rest.

In Singapore [when Vika competed at the Youth Olympic Games in 2010] it was easier because the gymnasts were less experienced. There were fewer people, less noise. I competed alone. Now we competed as a team. There was more responsibility and more support.

Rodionenko (about the composition of routines): The composition of routines abides by the FIG rules. There will be a new Code of Points for the new quad. The CoP changes every four years. We expect that gymnastic elements will deserve more attention. Floor is not only about acrobatics. We need a good combination of acrobatics and gymnastic elements. Vika has such combinations. You noticed that the American and Romanian gymnast perform acrobatics only. This is why there’s a struggle. We have our position. For the Americans it’s more difficult to reach our execution level. We fight for this. The judges started to pay more attention, but not all of them.

Komova: I think the rivals will be those that competed at the Olympics.

Rodionenko: Other gymnasts may appear. From Italy. But the main rivals are China, the Romanians have problems.

Journalist: Vika, Aliya, do you have the impression that you are able to stand pain more than the American gymnasts? They didn’t have the injuries that you had. Who is stronger?

Vika: we can compete with them psychologically.

Mustafina: In fact, we don’t know everything about them. We see how they perform, they see how they perform.

Rodionenko: I would like to add that if the Americans knew the injuries our girls had, they would highly praise them for their will. The gymnasts who performed had all injuries, pain.

Journalist: Before the program, you said that the Americans are very confident. Specialists say they are on tranquilizers.

Rodionenko: It’s difficult to say.

Now we’ll analyze the preparation of our first team because we’ve realized things that we didn’t pay attention to in the past.

Journalist: For instance?

Rodionenko: Functionally the Americans were far better prepared than our girls. We couldn’t do it because our girls were all injured. Professor Arkhipov was with them. He’s the best orthopaedic specialist in Russia. He was all the time with our team. He knew what injuries they had. Now they have to heal their injuries. Now they’ll go to Spain to a recovery training camp, we cannot overload them as they do in the US. They wouldn’t stand it. This is why they are so strong, so healthy, except for Douglas.

Journalist: like robots…

Rodionenko: I may not be objective. But their gymnastics are not beautiful. We are for classical, beautiful gymnastics, they are for athletic gymnastics. It’s called artistic gymnastics. It has to be artistic. This is our position. If one of our gymnasts became floor world champion last year, it means something.

Mustafina: My future plans are to continue training. To rest and then…

Rodionenko: There’s a competition in Frankfurt.

Vika: we’ll rest until 3 September.

Rodionenko: They’ll go to a training camp in Spain. I think that until the end of the year they won’t be given huge training loads. Now you have to do a step back. But if they want they can compete in Germany, there will be a World Cup stage. I would like to tell journalists that the Individual European Championships will take place in Kazan. Four gymnasts per country will compete. And the Universiade will take place in Kazan. The Universiade is a very prestigious competition. Russia hasn’t won it for a long time now.

Komova: In London we didn’t visit anything. If the competitions are easy, we go and do some sight-seeing. Usually, we just go to the gym and to the hotel.

Mustafina: It’s possible to do some elements that no one has ever performed, but it’s very difficult. There are so many elements in gymnastics that you don’t have time to learn something that nobody does. There’s an element called Mustafina: it’s a bar dismount.

Rodionenko: We write to the International Federation and they give the name to this element. There’s a Komova element on bars. [She’s silent. She doesn’t say anything.]

Journalist: You said that the audience supported the Americans. We saw the judges supporting them also. Concerning Paseka’s bronze instead of silver… Do you think this is only an impression?

Rodionenko: Unfortunately, yes. Russia lost her position. To come back is very difficult. It always is. The judges get used to the Americans dominating the scene. This is why we always tell our gymnasts that we have to be far better. For instance, Mustafina won gold on bars. If there had been the smallest possibility of deduction, she wouldn’t have achieved gold. And she knew it. We got used to what the judges do.

Journalist: Balandin performed very well on rings.

Rodionenko: I know, there was a very difficult situation with Balandin. The Technical Committee’s president – Adrian Stoica- said that his score should have been 0.3 higher, but now the supervisors and the members of the Technical Committee are split, they cannot change anything. Other sports disciplines have democratic rules. With 0.3 more, he would have won gold. There was nothing to deduct. His D score was lower than the gymnast who won, but the winner had a far worse execution. Unfortunately the judges didn’t see it. Or they saw it. The second place went to an Italian. But the President of the FIG is Italian - Bruno Grandi. We don’t have the right to protest the execution score and we don’t have the right to protest another’s gymnast score.

Journalist: Rules change from time to time. Could we go back to a situation where a judge would be responsible for his or her score?

Rodionenko: There will be FIG elections in November. If Titov is elected, I think that he’ll change some rules. Currently, in event finals we can’t find judges from the countries of competing gymnasts. The best countries are represented in the finals. The judges at the finals are from Qatar, countries where gymnastics doesn’t exist. They give the score that another judge gives. We all know that. We can only be much better than our rivals. When we are the leaders, this won’t happen to us. This is the rule in rhythmic gymnastics, ice skating.

In Mallorca the gymnasts will recover with sea water, light exercise. They don’t need apparatus. The girls may tell you. They have already been there.