Alexandrov and Mustafina update: RGF confirms Alexandrov's departure

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 same 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 coach) Evgeny Grebyonkin.

Alexandrov has gone to America to be with his family there. He is a US citizen.

Valentina says that since last year, Alexandrov has become increasingly distant from Aliya and there have been communication difficulties. Alexander did not accompany Aliya to the podium in Europeans, and merely sat in the stands, observing her. Aliya has worked more and more with the apparatus specialists, and in the end wrote a letter asking for Alexandrov's role as her personal coach to be terminated.  Raisa Ganina is mentioned as a coach who has increasingly taken a hand in Aliya's coaching, with Grebyonkin. [Ed - Raisa accompanied Aliya on the podium in Moscow and has contributed to her coaching since her early days under Dina Kamalova.]

In another interview, Valentina says she is 'dissatisfied' with the way that this story has been reported in the press.  But I wasn't aware that there had been any press reports of this to date, apart from these transcripts of her interviews  ...