Plans for the Olympics, the family cat, how Aliya managed her nerves in 2012 and much more - translation on Liubov's blog
Ksenia from Russia wrote to me as follows : 'I decided to write about a little update on this site . Suddenly you do not know but you may be interested in "The virtual gym" where you can see the training center for gymnastics at the "Round Lake" A very interesting thing if you want to look into what's inside.' She is right - it is fascinating - with tours of both the men's and women's gyms, pictures of the coaches and gymnasts, and all the different areas, including a reception with displays of awards and the rehabilitation and recovery facilities. Take some time to click on the arrows and try out all of the different features. It is in Russian but the tools are reasonably intuitive and if you have a basic grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet you can make sense of the whole. Scrolling round the panorama makes me feel a little bit dizzy and also gives a slightly distorted perspective to some of the views, which I think is a characteristic...
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.