Day trip to Round Lake - Natalia Kalugina reports

Denis Ablyazin, highlight of journalist Natalia Kalugina's recent trip to Lake Krugloye.  This picture comes from a gallery at Russian Gymnastics' sponsors VTB website - go there to see both awesome and adorable pictures of the gymnasts.

Natalia Kalugina made a day trip to the Russian national training centre, Lake Krugloye, in the last few days, and reported the following on her Facebook account.  With thanks to Natalia for permission to translate and publish these highlights here, and to Vladimir Zaglada for the link.

A trip to Lake Krugloye. 

Ablyazin is training the most difficult floor routine in the world with a D score of 7.1 that can go up to 7.3 for the World Championships! He is training with great energy.  On floor, his double twisting double somersault makes his double front piked look easy!  Denis hasn’t upgraded his vault. He intends to do it for the World Championships.

This is the most important thing I saw today at Lake Krugloye.

Something important as well: Matvei Petrov, pommel horse specialist, has returned after surgery with a good pommel horse routine. Petrov can be one of the three best gymnasts on this event at European level.

Nikolai Kuksenkov is adapting to the team. He is not training difficult elements so far. His heroic performance at the London Olympics is having consequences for Nikolai. He was treated with injections, here he is recovering rather than training, as the men’s head coach Valeri Alfosov said. At the Moscow European Championships Kuksenkov will not compete not due to his recovery, but because his Russian passport is not ready.

Well, I liked the men’s gym a lot.

Concerning the girls, the only Olympian I saw was Masha Paseka. Mustafina was in Kiev to compete at the Stella Zakharova Cup, Afanasyeva was on leave for personal reasons, Komova is recovering, I didn’t ask about Grishina. Masha is in good form for this time of the season. She is working hard. She will perform her Olympic vaults.

It was pleasant to see how well Katia Kramarenko is training. She has very good bars. Yet, more important, she has overcome her fear of vault. I want to remind those who might have forgotten: At the Stuttgart 2007 World Championships, Katia balked on her vault attempt during the team final, causing the team to lose the silver medal (and probably, the gold medal), and putting qualification for the Beijing Olympics at risk. The girl was so upset that she was afraid of vault. She is overcoming it! Little by little. Everybody is helping. On Friday she was working with Andrei Rodionenko. She is not afraid any more.

I saw the new-comers to the team: Shelgunova, Rodionova and Sosnitskaya. Shelgunova and Sosnitskaya are very good workers, patient. They lack brightness - that differentiates a champion from a good gymnast. Rodionova is very nice, when she doesn’t cry. You cannot judge from a single training session. The three of them are too young to assess them.