Skip to main content

Aliya Mustafina - injury update


With thanks to Nico of The Liukin blog, who produced this summary/translation of an interview with Valentina Rodionenko.

Source - http://www.allsportinfo.ru/index.php?id=8798

  • Aliya began treatment today in Munich, where she'll be staying for two weeks. So far the specialists don't think it's anything more severe than the inflammation that has been coming and going for a few years.  So more than anything Aliya needs to take it easy and not put so much stress on her back.

    Her condition most likely won't require any kind of surgery, otherwise the doctors would have mentioned it early on.  However, Aliya has been enduring the pain for a long time and relying on painkillers to the point that they were no longer working, and Aliya was refusing other kinds of treatment. Then everything started to take its toll on her in Stuttgart, so that prompted the immediate examination. And of course, the Russian coaches don't have much confidence in the medical team back home, so they sought treatment in Munich where they fully examined her, took photos, and everything to confirm the diagnosis.

    Right now they are going with a two-week treatment plus additional rehab. Although there is no guarantee this will 'cure' her condition given the nature of the sport and having to return to full training eventually, Valentina hopes Aliya can return by the start of the new year.

    Aliya kept refusing treatment because she felt obliged to always be available for her team (Valentina says Aliya is very patriotic). But we're beginning to see how that attitude is backfiring despite having her heart in the right place.

    On a side note, Valentina was pleased with Afanasyeva's return to competition and thought she did well. She's still gradually recovering.




Comments

  1. "And of course, the Russian coaches don't have much confidence in the medical team back home"

    I think that's kind of a quick interpretation ! I would rather imagine that the Russian coaches send their athletes to Germany because Germany has some of the the bests specialists in Europe.
    That's exactly what a Federation is supposed to do for top level gymnasts : provide them the best medical care possible, even if that means travelling across Europe.
    That doesn't necessarily mean that Russian doctors are incompetent and that the Russian coaches don't trust them.

    And by the way other countries are doing exactly the same thing, for example some members of the Romanian national team have been recently treated in Turkey.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aliya pleasee take some time off to heal properly. I am really counting for her in Rio2016. LOVE YOU Aliya :))

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'd like to think that humanitarianism, not patriotism, is what keeps her in that hellhole. I'd like to think that she stays for sake of the little ones, not herself.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WAG FX EF QUAL RUSSIAN CHAMPS 2026

Russian Championship 2026 — Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Event: Floor Exercise Venue: Central Sports Palace, Kaluga, Kaluga Region Dates: 28 June – 6 July 2026 Report generated: 1 July 2026 at 14:44 --- Final Results Place No. Athlete Region Difficulty (D) Execution (E) Penalty (Pen) Total Qualification 1 234 Lyudmila Arkadyevna Roshchina Krasnodar Krai 5.700 8.000 0.00 13.700 Q 1 221 Anna Dmitrievna Kalmykova Moscow 5.700 8.000 0.00 13.700 Q 3 240 Elizaveta Vladimirovna Us Krasnodar Krai 5.500 7.333 0.00 12.833 Q 4 205 Aleksandra Ivanovna Anufrieva Smolensk Region 5.100 7.700 0.00 12.800 Q 5 245 Kristina Konstantinovna Shavlovalova Moscow 5.100 7.533 0.00 12.633 Q 6 207 Varvara Viktorovna Belova Vladimir Region 5.500 7.066 0.00 12.566 Q 7 244 Elena Yuryevna Chursina Moscow 4.500 7.933 0.00 12.433 Q 8 230 Zlata Sergeyevna Osokina Leningrad...

The State of Gymnastics - 'Soviet' or 'American' style?

Lioudmilla Tourischeva, 1972 Olympic All Around champion in artistic gymnastics, was held up as an example of the ideal Soviet citizen.  Here she coaches one of the Soviet Union's leading gymnasts from the 1980 Olympics, Natalia Shaposhnikova The Soviet Union had a genius for lifting sport beyond the textbook, injecting the aesthetic where previously only goals had been in plain view.   This was not only manifest in gymnastics.  Do you remember the ‘Russian Five’, the players who elevated ice hockey to a creative sporting display, mesmerising their opponents and spectators with intricate patterns of play, so rhythmic and entertaining that they could have been set to music?   In gymnastics, a sport where the aesthetic counted as much as the outcome, it was this ability to create spectacle out of competition that resulted in the most extraordinary athletic performances.  The ‘Golden Era’, most commonly understood to cover the years from 1952-1...

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

It was a Sunday morning.  I was drinking my coffee and contemplating the day ahead - a workout at the gym, shopping for groceries, an evening reading a book, or catching up on last night's episodes of crime thriller The Bridge .  How nice it was not to have to think about work for a day. Then I saw it - a story about the history of doping in The Observer .  Interesting reading. Of course, cheating is as old as the hills.  It is, unfortunately, human nature for some people to try to gain easy advantage in any kind of competition.  That is why we have laws, rules, ethical guidelines.  People who cheat should face justice and shouldn't complain when they are found out. But the story about pregnancy doping bothered me.  Hadn't that been found to be fictional?  The author began with Olga Kovalenko's allegations made in 1994 - but the rumours had started way back in 1991 with the documentary series More Than A Game .  The practice...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more