Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

High summer has hit and with it an uncharacteristically high load of features to write ... to keep things up to date I will provide some brief links here to all the latest news. The historic Moscow Dynamo club , home to champions past and present including Emin Garibov, Sergei Kharkov, Natalia Ilienko, Olga Mostepanova, Tatiana Groshkova, Maria Goryunova and Nadezhda Ivanova, is being forced to transfer its operations for a minimum of three years to temporary facilities at the Olympiski stadium.  Dynamo's old building is being replaced by a brand new sporting facility funded by Russian sports sponsor, bank VTB, but the status of gymnastics within the new building is unconfirmed to date.  This temporary arrangement is far from ideal.  At present it seems likely that the Club will not be able to stage the annual Voronin Cup which has become such an important part of the international gymnastics calendar.   Removal arrangements seem highly informal, with the club ...

Valeria was sitting right next to me in the Olympiski Arena, Moscow, during the first day of the men's and women's event finals at the European Championships.  Her enthusiasm was infectious, her English excellent, and we soon got talking.   I'm really curious to know what makes gymnastics fans tick, so asked Valeria a few questions.  She has some very interesting and well articulated opinions. Valeria, what would you like to say about yourself? I'm 19 years old, live in Moscow, and study tourism management.   I love, of course, gym, cinema, travel. )) How did you first become interested in gymnastics? I became interested in gymnastics after watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics - in Russia, unfortunately, gymnastics is shown very rarely on the main channels, with poor commentators, so I was lucky to see it on cable TV, and I fell in love with gymnastics. :)) What is it about the sport that most excites you? I like the ...

Tatiana Nabieva will compete on vault and bars Russian teams for the Universiade (gymnastics competitions take place 7th to 10th July) have been announced. Team format is 5-4-3 : MAG : David Belyavski, Nikolai Kuksenkov, Denis Ablyazin, Emin Garibov, Mattei Petrov. Substitute - Nikita Ignatiev. Women: Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Tatiana Nabieva, Anna Dementieva, Maria Paseka Kuksenkov has only just gained eligibility to compete for Russia and this will be his first international appearance for his new team. Mustafina and Afanasyeva will compete all around. Nabieva has recovered from her injury and regained form and will be able to contribute on bars and vault, although she does not at present have a second vault.  If they want to win a medal on vault, they will have to take Maria Paseka.  There is an interview with Valentina Rodionenko about the selection here .  It is clear that there is still some final decision making left to do before the ...

They were brilliant, but did not make it to their final national teams for the World Championships, thanks to the sheer strength in depth of the Soviet team, or because they peaked too young. Enjoy a few of the best gymnasts never seen at World level - perhaps you would like to suggest a few more of your own? Yulia Kut, floor exercise, 1987 Nadezhda Ivanova, beam, 2004 Tatiana Kim, Floor, 1981 Alevtina Pryakhina, beam, 1986 - pity about that dismount Irina Viatinina, floor, 1988 Ekaterina Vandisheva, beam, 1993

Alexander Alexandrov, courtesy of Sports Express Alexander Alexandrov is not the first coach to leave Russia, and will not be the last.  Not too long ago, it was confirmed that over 320 coaches had already left the country to work overseas. There has been a subtle changing of the guard in Russian gymnastics coaching as a new generation of coaches has stepped up to replace the former Svengalis who shaped the sport during the 70s, 80s and much of the 90s. Take a look at the list of coaches on the RGF website.  Very few of the 'old guard' Soviet Russian coaches survive.  Chief coach Andrei Rodionenko is one of remaining few, but his personal style has always been cool, managerial, and rather distant, somewhat atypical of his peers.  The new generation of coaches are generally set in his image.  We are saying a long goodbye to the charismatic paternalism, the sartorial individualism of the Soviet personal coaches.  In its place we have the cool profe...

The RGF has now confirmed that Alexandrov has left Russia : thank you Laerke and Jennifer Ann for the link.   A brief summary of an interview with Valentina Rodionenko follows : Alexandrov's contract as national coach terminated at the end of last year; his acting role as national team coach ceased at the end of October 2012, which is when he began to concentrate his efforts exclusively on coaching Aliya. Valentina stresses the main justification for this is that Alexandrov could not be team coach and personal coach to Aliya Mustafina at the s ame time. She also points out that at this spring's Europeans the team won six medals, compared to their poor showing at last year's Europeans when Russia lost to Romania by a significant margin.   Implicitly, therefore, she feels that the national team were underperforming under Alexandrov.  Aliya Mustafina's gold medal at the Olympics came on uneven bars, where she was coached by specialist (now team c...

RRG can confirm (with thanks to Vladimir Zaglada) that Alexander Alexandrov has now left Moscow (with effect from 1st June) and will be taking up a coaching position in Brazil as soon as the fine details are sorted out. Patience please as we try to verify the exact details ... eyes peeled for Brazil or Russian press reports. Aliya Mustafina fans, don't panic ... at 18, Aliya is very mature and she will learn from this experience.  The writing has been on the wall for some time.  This is a sad moment for Russian gymnastics, but it is also a new beginning for all concerned. My very best wishes to Alexander as he begins his new life.

Not a fake profile ... Aliya's unofficial fanpage has over 50,000 followers Have you seen the film Spartacus, the bit where the Romans try to get Spartacus to give himself up , but fail because there are so many people who claim to be him? The gymnastics online community is getting a little bit like that ... I did some counting this morning on Facebook, having come across yet another online profile of a gymnast that claimed to be 'real' yet obviously wasn't :-) 22 online profiles of Aliya Mustafina 29 of Viktoria Komova Some of these are athlete pages that present news of the gymnast's progress, but many are simply fake identities that make use of personal photographs found elsewhere on the internet to develop whole new narratives of the gymnast's life.  I love my regular Gin O'Clock updates of HRH the Queen's daily life as much as the next person, but these profiles try to pretend to be the real Aliya or Vika, without the embellishment of h...