Skip to main content

A symphony of Ksenia Afanasyeva

Image
By

After two ankle surgeries in six months, World, Universiade and European Champion Ksenia Afanasyeva wasn't supposed to be at these Championships.  At the last minute, however, she made the decision to put in a showing and help her team.  Ksenia's face, most of all, shows how important her gymnastics is to her.  These pictures, by Elena Mikhailova for the Russian Gymnastics Federation, all convey an emotion, an atmosphere that is somehow unique to Afanasyeva.

Welcome back, Ksenia.


Thoughtful, before her first performance


Imperious, eternally elegant


A breathtaking leap


Typical Afanasyeva .. Complex shapes, curves and angles


Unique floor level movement


Ksenia's eyeline, hands and foot draw the focus in one direction, just as the movement is about to turn the other.


Balletic leap, caught in an off balance moment.  The angle of the head and arms provides a match to the position of the legs.


Practising vault under the watchful eye of Marina Nazarova, Ksenia's coach since childhood


Purposeful and hard working.  World Champion, twice Olympian helps to prepare the bars for her team mates













Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous5 April 2014 at 09:03

    she's sooooo amazing, perfect body lines in every single detail

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tatyana Nabiyeva on work and love in China

By
Some highlights from a long interview with 2010 World champion Tatyana Nabiyeva.  Source: Russian team page on VK.com.  Translation - Google translate A big interview with Tatyana Nabieva about the peculiarities of work and life in China, the bright years of her sports career, a little about modern gymnastics and about love. On the Nabiyeva flight — At the same championship, you presented a new element on the bars, which was later added to the rules with your last name (flying over the top bar with a straight body, difficulty group F. — Sport24). How did you come up with the idea to try something new? — Actually, it happened spontaneously, I think. We worked with Vera Iosifovna [Kiryashova] on the purity of the elements on the bars, sometimes I didn’t fly all the way to the Shaposhnikova element. Once I didn’t fly all the way to the bars either and stood on my feet between the bars, bending my legs in flight for safety. Then Vera Iosifovna said that this was a different eleme...
Post a Comment
Read more

30 years in elite sport: Oksana Chusovitina

By
You've been competing internationally for over 30 years. How has gymnastics changed over that time? Is there anything about your sport that has remained the same for decades? First of all, the age has changed. More mature athletes are competing now, which makes me happy. Secondly, the apparatuses. They've become more comfortable and sophisticated. Gymnastics in general has become more challenging, but in my youth, people performed mostly the same elements as they do now. Back then, this was par for the course, but now it surprises many. It's a bit amusing. Has the nature of the training itself changed? For me personally, absolutely. Now, my life isn't just about my athletic career. I'm involved with the Oksana Chusovitina Academy, which was personally opened by the President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. It has 155 students, both girls and boys. I used to train three times a day, but now I train once. The entire afternoon is taken up with the academy and organi...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Paseka for Russia in Berne

By
Barely two weeks will elapse before the WAG European Championships begin in Berne, Switzerland, and the news we had been fearing has been confirmed : world vault gold medallist Maria Paseka is  off the Russian team while she nurses a back injury.  This leaves Russia significantly weakened for the coming competition, with co-star Viktoria Komova also missing from the line-up.  It is a little disappointing, but it seems the right decision to rest the gymnasts so that they can be at their best when and where it really matters. Who will replace Paseka?  Valentina Rodionenko says that the youngster Natalia Kapitonova, who trains in Penza, has been chosen on the basis of her solid performances at national championships.  Well, we will have to wait and see - these announcements often turn out to be unreliable.   I personally would prefer to see the dynamic Seda Tutkhalyan be given a chance at this level, but Kapitonova has certainly shown herself to be more reliab...
41 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more