Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

A great montage from Team Russia on Instagram. Many thanks to the All Around and to Laerke and Nico at Gymfever who are keeping me up to date while I am on a Greek holiday in the sunshine.  Please bear with my brevity as I seek to update my readers while enjoying a holiday cup of tea amongst the mosquitoes on my patio . Andrew Rodionenko has confirmed via Tass Ksenia Afanasyeva and Emin Garibov will be out of competition for the remainder of the year.  They are currently in Germany where they will remain for rehab.  Garibov has had surgery to both shoulders and Afanasyeva to her ankle. Rodionenko hopes that Komova (ankle) will be fit to compete at Worlds on bars at least. Mustafina has had surgery to her ankle, (which has been bothering her since before the Olympics according to an interview with Elena Vaitsekhovskaya published in Sports Express and in translation on this blog back in August 2012).  Mustafina is the only gymnast who will be exempt from the Russia Cup...

Aliya Mustafina and Denis Ablyazin in Tel Aviv.  Photo credit : Oren Aharoni at YNet at http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4527406,00.html Amit Finkel has linked to the following article on his Facebook page, with a nice translation. Google translate:   Gymnast and Olympic champions quietly came to Israel with the Russian national team for a 10-day visit. Gymnasts are touring the country and enjoy everything Israel has to offer, but in order to keep fit also spend two hours a day in the gym at Hadar Yosef.   Alex Shatilov (called Stelov in the Hebrew version) said "I'm coming with the Russian team practice twice - three times a year, and they get me great, so we returned them and host them. It's a good change of scenery, and each also studying other ".   Mustafina: "The hall is good and the conditions are ideal., I do not see any differences between what is here and Russia. We have friends here, and this is the second consecutive year we practice here in an...

I responded to a question on Gymternet Clan on Facebook recently; which gymnasts did you see in competition first?  Being rather old, my reply was that at the 1976 Soviet Display at Wembley, I was lucky enough to see Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim and Olga Korbut.  Quite a heady memory, and one that for some unknown reason sent me in search of Chopin's Nocturne, 9-2, a piece of music that always reminds me of the deep, emotional and expressive Tourischeva.  She is the standout for me these days.  At the age of 16, Korbut's pyrotechnics appealed more.  Olga is still beautiful, very special, but somehow Ludmilla's gentle, complex gymnastics come from somewhere more intense and soulful, closer to me, these days. I haven't posted enough recently, having been busy at a Conference on Cultural Tourism in the Digital Era, in Athens, where as well as listening to and questioning others on their interesting research in this topic area, I had the p...