Skip to main content

Elena Eremina - straight Tkachev

   Eremina in 2016

St Petersburg has a tradition of great gymnastics - from 1980 and 1988 Olympic Champions Alexander Detiatin and Elena Shushunova, to this year's Junior European Champion, Elena Eremina via  World Champion Tatiana Nabiyeva and European beam champion Evgenia Kuznetsova.

And we shouldn't forget St Petersburg as a home of great innovation.  Elena Shushunova's half blind change to Markelov was astonishing in its time.  And then, we come to possibly my favourite single gymnastics element - the straight Tkachev, which Nabiyeva performed at the 2010 World Championships.

The legacy and heritage continues, and now 14 year old Elena Eremina is practicing the same skill in training.  You can see a video of this at her coach, Vera Kiryashova's Instagram account (https://instagram.com/p/BGsMgtNnqSk/).  Vera and her husband Alexander also coached Tatiana Nabiyeva.

Coach Vladimir Zaglada, who has held senior coaching roles in the USA, Russia and the Soviet Union, has commented - 

'I am very proud of the fact that Russian Gymnastics  still developing this counter swing's technique born in Russia more than 40 years ago!

It is quite obvious that particularly this kind of Reverse Hecht which was performed on such high technical level could decorate the routine of the future Olympic Medalist! 

My personal congratulations to the coaches from St. Petersburg, Vera and Alexander Kiryashov,  their brilliant gymnast. I wish Good Luck to them and Russia at Rio-2016'.

The Tkachev flight was first performed in international competition by Alexander Tkachev, in the Riga Cup, 1977.  Alexander now coaches in the USA, and his unique element is pervasive in both men's and women's gymnastics today.

Alexander performs the Tkachev somersault in 1977 - https://youtu.be/cxchk6yGgsY.

    Nabiyeva in 2010

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics

Svetlana Boginskaya, 15 years old, with her medals from the Seoul Olympics Nico translates the latest interview with gymnastics legend Svetlana Boginskaya, during a recent visit to her home country of Belarus. Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics, so now I ask for forgiveness from everyone who came in contact with me. The National Olympic Committee of Belarus held a press conference with three-time Olympic Champion in artistic gymnastics, Svetlana Boginskaya. The meeting was devoted to the 25th anniversary of the Olympic Games in Seoul. In South Korea the Belarussian won two gold medals in the team competition and vault. As a gift to the Olympic Hall of fame, the famous gymnast, now living in the United States, donated one of her trophies that she won at the 1990 European Championships and a pennant for Best Female Athlete of the USSR in 1989. How happy we were when we could share with such stars as Boginskaya, Scherbo, and Ivankov,...

Our Nelli Kim : a new documentary

Nelli Kim at the 1980 Olympics, courtesy of Nellikim.net I have mixed feelings about Nelli Kim.  She was certainly one of the most talented competitors the Soviet Union fielded in gymnastics, and that is saying something. She harvested first place  all around at the 1979 World Championships, her country's only gold medal in a somewhat disastrous competition for the Soviet women.  (That competition has become a very notorious one in history, if one remembers poor Nadia Comaneci's brave performance despite a serious wrist infection, and the winning Romanian team's sickeningly unhealthy appearance in Fort Worth.) Nelli was also a great performer and character.  Her career overlapped a time of fundamental change in the sport - when the lyricism of such performers as Tourischeva was overpowered by the pyrotechnical advances of the likes of Comaneci.  Nelli managed to reconcile the two qualities, and to span the gap between the two eras.  I don't think she ever r...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more