Lupita translates: interview with Alexander Alexandrov

There is a great interview at the VTB website with Alexander Alexandrov.  The Russian WAG head coach discusses the Olympics, the pros and cons of his team's performances, and some of the differences between  working in Russia and the States.

Just look and see what he says about Grishina's training arrangements!!

I'm expecting a formal announcement some time soon about the coaching staff at Lake Krugloye.  I simply hope that they can find an arrangement that makes the best use of the coaching talent in Russia and gives the head coach the right level of authority.  And, as far as I am concerned : who else in Russia could possibly replace the inimitable Alexandrov?  Mustafina and the team need him!  The Russian team also needs to consider succession planning as Alexandrov, Rodionenko and the like cannot go on forever.  

Now read on ...

Alexander Alexandrov.  Picture courtesy of the RGF

Alexander Alexandrov, head coach of the Russian women’s team: 

‘The experts should gather and think. Perhaps, difficulty shouldn’t be increased’

September 17^th 2012

An open class at ‘Mikhail Voronin’ Dynamo club was honored with the presence of a man, whose knowledge and experience were a determinant of the team’s success in London. It was impossible not to seize the opportunity of having a final interview with the master.  A good introduction to the interview was the comment of one of the coaches who went to Alexander Alexandrovich to thank him for an interesting idea.

–       

           -   You have been working for a long time in the States and then two years ago you wrote a long article on children’s education in America and here. I remember one sentence: try to pay 5 more minutes to one child than to the other. 

– Our system is slightly different, – answered Alexander Alexandrov. – In the States sport is above all business. Business is business. You don’t have the right to pay more attention to someone. Here we are paid by the State and, even if the coach doesn’t want to, he realizes who has potential and he begins to devote more efforts and expertise. A gifted child stands out and reaches better results than the others.

This short dialogue reminded us that the Russian team’s success is strongly related to the fact that the Russian Federation, with its general sponsor VTB, hired Russian specialists, including Alexander Alexandrov, for the preparation of our team. 

– Аlexander Alexandrovich, could you please assess the team’s performance at the London Olympics, and each one of the athletes.

– OK. Let’s start with Mustafina. I think that she performed very well, taking into account her injury and everything related to that. We can give her an excellent score. 

– Аliya’s strong will amazed everyone. She was the only gymnast on the team who displayed confidence, even in front of the Americans. 

– Aliya loves to perform and is able to perform. She was looking good when she became world champion in 2010. Before London we had no time to bring back everything that Mustafina performed before her injury. We limited ourselves to what she could do. I think that her bronze medal in the AA is a very good result. Her four medals, including gold on bars, are a huge success. 

– We talked to Maria Abakumova, world champion in javelin throwing, who didn’t perform well at the London Olympics. She said that the most difficult athletes are those who can do everything in training, but who can’t in competition. Is Mustafina the opposite example? 

– No, she is not. Аliya trains pretty well. Today’s gymnastics is so complex that, if you don’t do a specific load of work in training, it’s impossible to perform well. For instance, when she had to perform at the European Championships before the Olympics, Аliya was not ready; she didn’t perform well after a long break. She said: ‘I felt like I was competing for the first time’. She made mistakes on bars and floor. If you don’t do a specific volume in training, your natural skills as a competitor don’t work. 

– Yet, strong will plays an important part. After the European Championships, the press began to bury Mustafina. It was difficult to cope with that. 

– Аliya won the Russian championship this year, by the way. They said that she got help from the judges, but nobody helped her, she won cleanly. 

– Coming back to the Olympics, Mustafina probably is the only one who performed at the highest level and won the most medals? 

– I think that her performance was very successful. She used all her potential. 

 

– Let’s turn to Vika Komova. 

– Komova has one problem: she grew very quickly. When this happens, the technique has to change. Her physical state is not very good and she had small foot injuries, – all this is very demanding. Yet, Vika trained courageously and did everything possible to upgrade her routines to catch the Americans. She did it; she overcame the Americans with her difficulty. But she lacked time to be more confident. Komova brought back her Amanar vault, the most difficult vault currently. When she performed, you could feel she hadn’t polished everything and she made a mistake on the AA vault. To perform simpler combinations would have meant to give up the fight for gold against the Americans. 

– Does it mean that giving her too difficult a programme was not a mistake?

– You see, we considered all those aspects. Vika upgraded her routines on all events. You can expect mistakes when something is fragile. This was the reason. Vika knows how to perform. She upgraded the routines just before the beginning of the Olympics.  Nobody thought she should leave out anything.  For instance, on beam she could have dismounted with a simple double tuck, but she performed a double front. It’s much more difficult, but we chose this variable. The first day she beat the Americans in the qualifying competition. 

– In one magazine, there was a striking title: to compare Viktoria Komova and the Americans is like comparing the Marinsky ballet and a disco. 

– I wouldn’t say so. There are different styles in gymnastics. China and Russia go for plastic gymnastics and we strive for beauty everywhere. We have the potential for this as we have choreographers working at our children’s sport schools. When you pay attention to this aspect during childhood, the athletes look better, and the choreography training is better. The Americans lack this. 

– Don’t they have a choreographer? 

– No. The children’s clubs don’t have choreographers. They count their money and usually couples work in clubs - a man and a woman. Traditionally, the man works bars and vault and the woman – beam and floor. They don’t have time to teach choreography, they do it superficially. When the athletes make the national team, they try to make their movements more beautiful, but at that stage it’s too late to change something dramatically. They know this very well and two years ago, Marta Karolyi, US head coach, bet on athleticism and complexity of the routines. Everyone is looking for a way and we cannot say that Komova and Douglas are opposites. Yes, Komova is prettier for the way she performs and other Russian gymnasts differ from the Americans. Yet the Americans use what the US gymnastics structure allows them to use. We want to see lightness and beauty on floor. Still, Raisman, with rather poor choreography, performed such acrobatics that she had a very high D score and won gold. 

– Yuri Titov, former Olympic champion, said that eight years ago the acrobatics in women’s gymnastics was more complex. 

-  Everything depends on the Code of Points that changes every four years. At the Barcelona 1992 Olympics, our girls performed a double lay-out with a twist. All the acrobatics runs were backwards. Now the gymnasts cannot do this because they have to perform four tumbling runs and some specific combinations that sometimes are dangerous and can even cause injuries. I don’t understand why the FIG is going in this direction so stubbornly. Why do we need certain combinations in order to get bonuses? Before, we tried to perform a very difficult element – round-off, back handspring, full twist; now we have to perform combinations.  Therefore, it’s less spectacular, it looks quite simple, but the combinations get bonus, this is why it’s necessary to include them. 

– I read a curious article by a British enthusiast of gymnastics. The article’s title is: “Who really won the Olympics”. She publishes a whole report of the judges’ scores at the London Olympics. Based on the reference judges’ scores, Komova finished in first place. 

– Some judges supervise competitions. They don’t have the right to interfere, but after the competitions they write reports and can express their opinion. Gymnastics is a subjective sport, someone likes something, another one doesn’t. For this reason, it’s very difficult to state something. I repeat once again: of course, I prefer Komova, but there are deductions that are applied. On the first event, the vault, she gave ground and the judges decided to keep her in second place. If she hadn’t given ground, who knows, she could have won. Probably she would have won! There are a lot of judges from Latin America, who depend on the Americans, because all the gymnastics competitions take place in the US. They study in the US and of course they will help the Americans. Only a little, but still they help them. Even if they don’t help them, they are not going to be harsh on them. 

–Let’s now talk about Маria Paseka. 

– We wanted Masha Paseka to perform the Amanar vault and we knew that she could not help us anywhere else. We took her into the team and she fulfilled the expectations. Paseka came back with a medal, which was very pleasant and a great success. 

– I want to ask a question about the American gymnast who fell on vault, but still won silver. 

– You know, it’s all about psychology. Maroney was so much stronger than the rest on vault that no one could beat her and nobody thought she could make a mistake. Furthermore, according to the rules, she didn’t sit on the floor. She was deducted one point, that’s all. 

– Is nobody guilty in those decisions?

– I don’t think so. If we analyze this in depth, of course it’s possible to find errors. Any fall is due to something. Height might not have been sufficient; the rotation might not have been complete. But it was all psychological; the judges were stunned because they could have given her the gold medal with no competition. I don’t understand what was wrong with Маroney. She did everything in training and in warm-up. 

– Let’s now talk about Ksenia Afanasyeva. 

– Overall Ksenia performed well. She was hindered by a foot injury that she sustained in the finals of the Russian championships. At the beginning, we thought that it was not serious as she even finished her routine. In a week, it would be over and everything would be normal. Unfortunately, the recovery was very long and Ksenia started to train at full strength a month before the Olympics. Last year, when Ksenia competed much better in the AA and on floor, she trained a lot more. This time, she trained for one month. But at the same time Ksenia made two finals, this is also a success. Of course, after last year’s World Championships, when she became floor world champion, everyone hoped she would perform better on this event. Talking about her fall, she said: ‘Before the last run, I usually take a breath, but this time I rushed myself, found myself with no air’. We wanted Afanasyeva to win a medal in floor, but it was not possible. Still, she helped the team. 

–        - Nastia Grishina…

– Our expectations for Nastia did not fulfill. Two years, or even four years, ago we thought that Grishina, Komova and Mustafina would be the main gymnasts on the team, able to fight for gold with the American team. Unfortunately, this was not so, and I think that this was her personal coach’s fault. He was responsible for Grishina’s preparation for four years. He thought that he could train Nastia better, but unfortunately this did not happen. 

– Is it true that at the Olympics Nastia Grishina refused to perform on beam? 

– When Grishina competed, she didn’t perform like the other girls. She made mistakes here and there. Naturally, she began to lose confidence. According to our plan, she was to compete on beam at the team final, but she asked: ‘Don’t put me in’. She feared to let the team down. 

– Was there no alternative to Grishina? 

– Who could make the team instead of Nastia Grishina? We didn’t think of it, taking all her potential into account. Four years ago we thought that this “troika” could fight for the medals, but you see what happened. Mustafina was injured, Komova grew taller and, according to me, Grishina didn’t train well. I want to say that it’s not her fault, but her personal coach’s. The thing is that we didn’t manage this situation very well. 

– Komova’s situation is a shame. It’s perhaps worth increasing the age to 18 in gymnastics in order to decrease the psychological load and the risk of injuries. Children are performing at the Olympics! 

– They are not children. They are already 16! They look like children because gymnastics is a sport where weight is very important. The more an athlete weighs, the more difficult it becomes to work. Currently, the age limit to compete in adult competitions is 16. At this age, girls tend to grow very fast. Nobody knows what will happen when the gymnast is 18. They gain weight and the majority of them then cannot do what they could when they were 14. 

– It means that an athlete can train during his or her childhood and when turning 18, doesn’t have the chance to perform at the highest level? 

– Yes. American Shawn Johnson started to grow before the Olympics. Six months later, she wouldn’t have made the team, although she was world champion. The experts should gather and think. Perhaps difficulty in gymnastics shouldn’t be increased. There are plenty of different approaches. It all depends on the CoP. 

– Currently do you know how the CoP will change for the next quad? 

– The CoP will slightly change, but all in all it remains the same. The priority will be strength gymnastics. We should gather and think seriously, not only us, the FIG should collect data and reach a common approach. 

– What are the expectations for this team? 

– The women’s team changes more often because when the girls are 18, they gain weight for two to three years and they quit. The men had a generation shift just before the Olympics and they’ll all train for one more quad. This won’t happen to the girls. From the previous Olympics only Afanasyeva remained, and only because she is light. 

Теxт: Leonid Sitnik, Irina Belozerova

Photos: RIA Novosti. Russian Gymnastics Federation