Skip to main content

We want to win medals - Valery Alfosov

By
Nikita Ignatyev competes this spring at Russian Championships.  Picture courtesy RGF

Key points of interview with men's head coach Valery Alfosov http://www.allsportinfo.ru/index.php?id=82847

- The team is at the final stages of preparation, undergoing control competitions.  Training is very good, he is satisfied with the gymnasts and their routines (elsewhere, Kuksenkov says the men have upgrades to show, his on high bar and pommels).  http://m.rsport.ru/artist_gym/20140508/744508287.html

- Their team is in 'perfect working condition', and working to peak for competition at the end of May - in time for Euros.  His only slight worry is Ablyazin's second vault - but there will always be these worries when you want to win medals.  'We can only hope for the best'.

- 'The most dangerous competitors - the UK, Germany, France, Ukraine and Romania.'

- 'We want to win medals. But we understand that our rivals are very strong, do not stand still, and are developing and complicating their programmes, improving items and so on. Therefore to predict winning medals at the European Championships is very difficult.'

- 'There was a period when different opponents considered it an honour to beat a Russian.  ... Our task is to train well, get ready to try to beat our rivals. That's all!'

- Selection for the World Championships will be made on the basis of the results of the Russia Cup.  He hopes there will be some new names on the roster, mentioning in particular 19 year old Vlad Polyashov from Cheboksary, who is reserve for the Euros team (8th all around in Russian Champs, competed in pommel horse and parallel bars finals, coached by A Vassiliev).

-  The athletes competing here are the foundation of the Olympic team, as we are mid Olympic cycle.  They want members of the youth team to now come forward and begin to prepare for the Olympics, hoping to rise to the senior team.  Strong competition always leads to good results.
Labels:

Comments

  1. M11 May 2014 at 17:33

    I hope they get medals too, the men can be so disappointing, they do well in qualifying and then awful in the finals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11 May 2014 at 21:08

      Exactly, they run out of gas by team final.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Head MAG Coach Alfosov on Russian gymnastics prospects in 2026

By
"A Really Good International Level": Alfosov on the Return of Russian Gymnasts, Belyavsky's Videos, and the Games Qualification Alfosov: Belyavsky's presence on the team was a big plus Interview by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya  Google translate Russian gymnasts competing under neutral status will be able to take their first step toward qualifying for the Los Angeles Olympics as early as October, Valery Alfosov, head coach of the Russian men's team, told RT. He believes that qualifying for not only the individual but also the team competition at the World Championships is one of the season's greatest achievements. He also explained the criteria he uses to compare his players with their competitors and described David Belyavsky's decision last year as hard-won. The current season began with good news for the gymnasts: almost all of the leading Russian team members are participating in international competitions. Does this mean the suspension situation is a thing of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artistry versus acrobatics???

By
Watching videos of this weekend's competitions - the qualification and all around rounds of the Russian championships, medal winners from the American Cup - I am struck, more and more, by the huge difference between the American and Russian schools of gymnastics. It led me to ask the question : do artistry and acrobatics have to be mutually exclusive? (I am afraid that I think naming 'American' gymnastics a 'school' is perhaps lending an undeserved dignity to work which has become excessively obsessed with the difficult and the consistent, but I am using the word here so as not to label unfairly those individual gymnasts who are blameless in the direction of their training.) The FIG's vision for gymnastics is said to embrace more artistry; at least the publicity it has put about on the subject of its new Code makes that fairly plain.  So perhaps the Russians, with their inconsistent brilliance and superior body carriage (Mustafina, Komova, Grishina, Afanasy...
39 comments
Read more

Angelina Melnikova and Arseny Dukhno - Results from Serie A competitions in Italy

By
  Russia's neutral gymnasts have been performing very well in competition recently, not least at the Cottbus Cup last week where a fairly inexperienced group of young women took medals on every piece - and their men did well, too. The team is still in the position where its veterans, or at least its established performers, are the leaders.  For the women, this means that Melnikova is assumed to be the top, while for the men, Marinov is the one whose name is most likely to be spoken.  But he is still recovering from multiple injuries and not expecting to be ready for competition until later in the year.  In fact the leadership of the men's team has skipped a couple of generations: first year senior, Arseny Dukhno, is taking the lead for the team. So while the youngsters head off to the World Cup competitions to make a name for themselves there, the leaders are competing in the Serie A league in Italy - and they aren't doing too shabbily there.  Both Melnikova and...
Post a Comment
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more