Plans for the Olympics, the family cat, how Aliya managed her nerves in 2012 and much more - translation on Liubov's blog
'Should Mustafina compete in Glasgow, considering her fragile state of health? - aren't the Olympics more important?' are the key themes of this brief news piece by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, a top sports journalist who has interviewed Alexandrov, Arkayev, Starkin, Mustafina and Rodionenko in the last five years since Aliya won the World Championships. Elena stresses that this year nothing unusual has happened. Aliya has worked hard with her new coach Sergei Starkin. She did a 'great job', demonstrating her work at the European Games in Baku where she won the all around, bars and team events as well as silver in the floor exercise. But, says Vaitsekhovskaya, more important than the medals was the fact that Aliya showed a new technical level, began work on upgrades for the Rio Olympics. Just competing in one event - the Baku games - could be enough for a veteran athlete of Mustafina's experience. The body ages in both time - and injuries. Athletes always respond...
Aliya handles it graciously, but I wish Russian sport journalists would stop going on about Simone and the ADHD medication all the time. It's mean-spirited and unsportsmanlike, like when American sport journalists used to constantly prod about Chinese gymnasts possibly being underage.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the the mental state that helps Aliya compete so well comes across in interviews. She talks about gymnastics in a similar way to Kohei Uchimura, interestingly.