Skip to main content

Natalia Kapitonova - personal travelogue to Rio

Image
By

Natalia, seen left here in this personal picture with team mates Angelina Melnikova and Maria Paseka, is a relative newcomer to the senior national team, but not its youngest member - having turned 16 in May (Angelina only celebrated her 16th birthday a few days ago).  She is Russian Cup champion on the uneven bars - and strong enough in the all around to provide a good back up, as first reserve, if back up is needed.

The famous gym club in Penza - home to 2014 World floor champion Denis Ablyazin - is where Natalia has trained since childhood under the direction of the Starkin family - who also direct the training of Russian team captain, Aliya Mustafina.  Despite her relative lack of experience internationally, Natalia has shown herself to be a steady and optimistic team mate.  

The flight to Brazil - over 12 hours - was the longest of her life.  At first she slept, but she also read, watched movies and listened to music.  She says that the team weren't too worried about whether they would be allowed to compete; they felt reasonably confident about the IOC decision.

'I can hardly believe that I am in Rio!' said Natalia to local newspaper Penza Sight.  Everything has happened very quickly.


Natalia is sharing a room with Evgenia Shelgunova, and the two reserves are housed in a separate accommodation bloc to the main team.  They haven't had a chance yet to see much of Rio - just the gym, the supermarket and their hotel.  The main thing now is to stay in good form for the Games - no time for much rest.


Source - http://penzavzglyad.ru/news/11419/natalya-kapitonova-do-sih-kazhetsya-chto-ya-ne-v-rio-de-zhaneyro

Please visit RRG's Facebook page for more pictures of the team in Rio, and follow my Twitter feed (RussianGymnast) for quick updates.  With thanks to the Gymnastics group page on vk.com.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous27 July 2016 at 09:54

    Valentina says that FIG has questions about Kapitonova, coz she doesn't suits IOC criterium and they may disqualify her from Rio Olympics :/ Also Paseka has now a back injury and only on 3 august doctors will decide will she compete in Rio at all ;( Rodionenko says that they also need to lose some dif for Melnikova coz her injury((( PS Russia why!?( http://tass.ru/sport/3489095

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

30 years in elite sport: Oksana Chusovitina

By
You've been competing internationally for over 30 years. How has gymnastics changed over that time? Is there anything about your sport that has remained the same for decades? First of all, the age has changed. More mature athletes are competing now, which makes me happy. Secondly, the apparatuses. They've become more comfortable and sophisticated. Gymnastics in general has become more challenging, but in my youth, people performed mostly the same elements as they do now. Back then, this was par for the course, but now it surprises many. It's a bit amusing. Has the nature of the training itself changed? For me personally, absolutely. Now, my life isn't just about my athletic career. I'm involved with the Oksana Chusovitina Academy, which was personally opened by the President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. It has 155 students, both girls and boys. I used to train three times a day, but now I train once. The entire afternoon is taken up with the academy and organi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tatyana Nabiyeva on work and love in China

By
Some highlights from a long interview with 2010 World champion Tatyana Nabiyeva.  Source: Russian team page on VK.com.  Translation - Google translate A big interview with Tatyana Nabieva about the peculiarities of work and life in China, the bright years of her sports career, a little about modern gymnastics and about love. On the Nabiyeva flight — At the same championship, you presented a new element on the bars, which was later added to the rules with your last name (flying over the top bar with a straight body, difficulty group F. — Sport24). How did you come up with the idea to try something new? — Actually, it happened spontaneously, I think. We worked with Vera Iosifovna [Kiryashova] on the purity of the elements on the bars, sometimes I didn’t fly all the way to the Shaposhnikova element. Once I didn’t fly all the way to the bars either and stood on my feet between the bars, bending my legs in flight for safety. Then Vera Iosifovna said that this was a different eleme...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who will travel to Berne? A Russian mystery

By
Aliya Mustafina and team candidate Seda Tutkhalyan - both from Moscow Five days left before the MAG European Championships open in Switzerland, and Russian gymnast Nikita Nagorny is posting videos of himself practicing a full twisting Roche vault - I wonder if he will compete it in Berne?  The men's team seems fairly well prepared and ready to travel as announced some weeks ago - Kuksenkov, Belyavski, Ignatyev, Nagorny, Ablyazin.  But the composition of the women's team, who will travel to their first major competition of 2016 next week, seems somewhat undecided.  Will Natalia Kapitonova make her major senior debut in June, or will Seda Tutkhalyan, her dynamic yet unpredictable rival, grace Russia's team?  Or will other gymnasts be brought into play; will further, unexpected, changes be made? If head coach Valentina Rodionenko's recent announcement is to be believed, it is a simple case of replacing the injured Maria Paseka (a vault specialist) with Natalia ...
22 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more