The magnificent Afanasyeva, rule breaking and other early morning musings

Ksenia Afanasyeva during qualifications last Wednesday, in Montpellier.  Courtesy RGF

It's way too early in the morning to be blogging, really, but unless I seize the day and get down to a bit of writing I'll never be able to update you.  I'm bang in the middle of grading season so my hours and thoughts are mostly taken up with concerns for my students at the Uni where I work full time.  But, for my blog, I will find a few quiet moments in the earliest hours of the day.  I should really be asleep, but it's that kind of London morning when the birds are tweeting and the mist is drifting gently over the gloomy skyline.  You can smell the faint tinge of vehicle emissions in the polluted air.  It aggravates my asthma.  But the promise of spring is still there, predicting a summer when perhaps I will finally find the time to make the changes I need, to find somewhere to live that doesn't make me cough and make more space and time for the writing and creativity that I now want to be at the centre of my life.

There is some very good gymnastics news for those of us who love the Russian team.  For a start, Lifje tells us that Aliya Mustafina and Larissa Iordache are planning an outing to a friendly team competition between Italy, Russia, Romania and Columbia, to be held in Turin on May 30th.  This will no doubt be a good warm up for Aliya as she prepares for the European Games.  Hopefully if there is live streaming or videos, we will get a chance to see how her gymnastics is developing.  I have other, exciting news about Aliya which I will be featuring on this blog in a few days' time.  Some of you may already have seen some of the teasers but I have fuller information on the photoshooot/interview she has done for Alexei Nemov's magazine, Bolshoi Sport.  Watch this space.

On a somewhat less encouraging note, poor Alla Sosnitskaya, who injured herself during training in the days before the European Championships, is in a boot, having injured some of the ligaments in her ankle.  She will miss the European Games, where she was scheduled to compete all around, and hopes to recover in time for Worlds, but we don't really know.  Valentina Rodionenko has suggested that eternal reserve Evgenia Shelgunova might take her place, if she is ready.  The Russians need an all arounder to fill that final spot behind Aliya Mustafina and - if she can - Viktoria Komova.

Given Komova's long track record of will-she-won't-she behaviour and circumstances, Russia might well be looking for two more all arounders to fill the team beside Mustafina, and it will be interesting to see who makes the final three.  Of course, the gymternet excitement is focussed on the dynamic Seda Tutkhalyan.  I think most of us would love to see Seda's face on a Russian senior team.  My thoughts about Seda at the present time, having reviewed her Youth Olympics performances, is that she has potential as a beam and vault specialist but still has - or had - a little way to go on floor and bars.  I'm beginning to see why she hasn't quite made the team as yet, although I am willing to believe rumours of upgrades.  I like this determined and energetic gymnast just as much as any of you and hope she can find consistency on the grand stage - she seems to me to be temperamentally fit and may well be the girl for the big occasion.

Speaking of our favourites, I was very glad to see an interview with Ksenia Afanasyeva by a journalist who I think is probably a growing favourite with the national head coaches, Maria Vorobyeva.  Ksenia had a lot of interesting things to say - these are the main things that I found of interest :

• The recovery from her injury was very difficult.  After competing in the Olympics and the Universiade, the pain in her ankle gradually became worse - it was the first time in her life that she ever felt that she just couldn't do anything.  At first, after the operation, she didn't know if she would want to return at all.  One day she would feel better, the next worse. 
• Her return to competition, at the Russian Championships, was a kind of turning point.  She felt she was ready, but her legs and arms still felt weak.  It was really since this competition that she had begun to train much more assiduously.  She said that at 23, her age really made a difference to her gymnastics, and that she feels that she is a lazy gymnast (I'm sure this isn't true!).  
• She really didn't think that she would win floor, as the tumbling of Claudia Fragapane and Giulia Steingrueber would surely mean that one of them would record the top score.  Also, she mentions not liking the floor mat in Montpellier (something that Denis Ablyazin also mentions elsewhere).  But in the end, she says, 'my victory made it clear: on the floor it is not only power that matters - there is also dance, choreography'.
• Other thoughts on this : 'I believe that floor must include beautiful choreography, complex jumps, turns and acrobatics. That's why I'm glad that the judges appreciate all three of these components, but do not focus on one of them.'
• She says that at first she thought her floor score (in quals) was low, but then she looked at the marks overall and realised that everyone had been marked the same.  The judges were very strict in Montpellier.
• This competition was only the second time that she had competed the Amanar!  She hadn't planned to use it, but realised that if she did the DTY she would only be equalling the difficulty of her main rivals, so to win medals she needed the Amanar.  She won't be training it all the time, to save her legs and ankles.
• She has to be patient to get to the finishing line - Rio.  Her injury still really worries her - it is something that could affect her for life.
• The coaches are trying to persuade her to do beam, but she isn't sure about this - she is very nervous of competing beam.  She might have to do so for the team at World Championships.  As far as bars is concerned - enough is enough.  The coacbes would like her to do all around, but she would prefer to be a specialist, even if that does include working beam.
• She is trying not to think of Rio.  Just live for today.

Afanasyeva has such a graceful demeanour, not just on the exercise mat but also as a person - I remember a conversation I had in Moscow in 2013, with Brigid of the Couch Gymnast.  Brigid had attended the Pacific Rim competition at which a young team of Russians had competed, captained by Ksenia.  She said how kind and caring the European floor champion was towards her younger team mates.  I think that is something that somehow shines through, in everything that the gymnast does - a thoughtful nature and very much a caring person - she will make an excellent team captain alongside the fiery Mustafina. 

Finally, I had a thought about risk taking and rule breaking in gymnastics, almost before the sun rose this morning.  Gymnastics has changed by more than a few tenths in the Code.  Today, it is about following rules, whereas in the - increasingly distant - past, it was about rule breaking.  Innovation is bound to the ground rules established in the Code, so we see originality as adding a twist to a somersault or turn.  There is relatively little of the true ground-breaking innovation such as the first Tkachev, the first Kovacs and so on that developed so rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s.

So is the sport - the athletes and coaches - limited by the imagination of whoever drafts the Code?

I'm beginning to think so - but what do you think?

Have a lovely day!