Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Bronze on rings and silver on vault were Denis's reward for hard work, earned today in Rio. Interviewed by Sportbox after the event, Denis said he would take a break after the Games to treat and rest a 'very sore shoulder'.  He plans to return to competition with his most complicated routines, not watering down, as that 'is not my way'.  He pointed out that he was better prepared for Rio than he had been for London; by implication I wonder if we can take that to mean he'll be better still in 2020?! Russia's other qualifier to vault final, 19 year old Nikita Nagorny, performed well to finish in fifth position.   In the women's competition, the graceful Sanne Wevers of the Netherlands won gold with a beautiful and original beam routine after expected gold medallist Simone Biles bobbled on this precarious apparatus.  Wever's win was the first Olympic medal in gymnastics for a Netherlands woman. Today's finals were notable for the high standard of co...

Exclusive interview with the first Russian athletes to arrive in Rio Translation by Liubov Baladzhaeva Athletes are escorted throughout the airport so that they can get to the Olympic village without delays. There are a lot of soldiers with assault rifles for security reasons. The first training for the gymnasts starts  at 9:00 , they usually take a bus to the gym although it’s walking distance from their accommodation. Journalists are not allowed into the Olympic village. Aliya talks about their rooms and the village: they didn’t really have time to walk around, because they train twice a day and have to rest in between. The rooms are on the smaller side, but cozy. She’s happy with the living conditions, no complaints. Denis Ablyazin will turn 24 in Rio. He’s one of the Russian MAG hopes for a gold medal, which they didn’t have since 2000.   Asked about who are his main competitors, he says that he sees every single gymnast in Rio as a competitor. Other than that they j...

Russia's leading male all around gymnast, David Belyavski, with head coach Andrei Rodionenko As the first big competition of the year approaches for Russia's male gymnasts - the national championships in Penza, which begin in just three days' time - Irina Stepantseva of MK.ru has focussed on the team's preparation, with a visit to Round Lake.  There she interviewed many of the gymnasts, and head coach Andrei Rodionenko.  You can view the full piece in Russian here .   The context : As I have said before, Russian sport has been hit hard by all the doping bans, particularly in track and field athletics.  RUSADA, the national anti-doping agency, has been accused of falsifying documentation.  Tennis has taken a hit, with Maria Sharapova testing positive for the controversial drug Meledonium, and now swimming appears to be being targeted.  I think we can probably expect that all Russian sport will be under the microscope for months to come.  It'...

Valentina Rodionenko has confirmed that Mustafina is back in training.  Tass This year the Ministry of Sport has published the full lists of gymnasts training with the national team - youth, junior, senior reserve and senior.  You can find the full lists, including the coaches, in Russian language here , and there is a transcription of the gymnasts' names in English at JAS's blog, Videos of Russian Gymnasts . As usual, you will find that there is a little delay before the lists catch up with the reality.  For example, Maria Bondareva's name still appears on the listing for the senior reserve team, but sadly, she announced her retirement for medical reasons some months ago.  The senior lists otherwise include all those in training for the Olympics.  You can read what I think of the early announcements of the Olympic teams here .  The full Olympic teams will include only five gymnasts, so competition for places will be fierce and, no doubt, health wil...

In the absence of Russia's track and field athletes, gymnastics will bear much of the national sporting responsibility at the forthcoming Rio Games, says coach Sergei Starkin.  Denis Ablyazin is Russia's main medal prospect in gymnastics and will begin training for the Games today.  At the Russian Championships (early April) he will perform his programme for European Championships. The plan is for Denis to have his Olympic routines ready by then. http://penza.rfn.ru/rnews.html?id=444649

Denis Ablyazin - coach Sergei Starkin confirms that his preparations are going well Keep your eyes peeled over the coming days and weeks for news of the Russian team.  Offical nominative registrations were published by the FIG over a week ago, but it is almost inevitable that there will be some changes to the team line-ups. Sources close to the Russian team hint that this year it may be their men's team, and in particular specialist Denis Ablyazin, who has the best chance of shining on the podium in Glasgow.  And personal coach, Sergei Starkin, has indirectly confirmed that Aliya Mustafina may well not participate in this month's World Championships, the latest turn in a long round of statement-and-counter-statements made by the Russian team about their Olympic star. As usual there remain significant question marks over the readiness of the women's team.  Journalist Natalia Kalugina visited Lake Krugloye yesterday and her reports indicate that there is still room...

Dynamic young Seda Tutkhalyan, a leading gymnast in Penza this week, is finding her feet in senior competition Once again this week the Russian women showed themselves to be vulnerable to errors in the first day of apparatus finals, while the men excelled.  Please see the results below, as ever courtesy of the Russian Gymnastics Federation. On bars, Viktoria Komova performed hors de competition, recording a score of 15.3 - she didn't qualify officially to the final so can't be recorded as champion, but she is consistently now Russia's highest scorer on this apparatus.  Russia are already strong here, and she will need to up her game on other apparatus (Valentina mentioned beam and vault) to qualify to be part of the team in Glasgow. A key fact emerging this week in Penza is the growing strength of Nikita Ignatyev, who for a long time was the unlucky one on the team who would often fall or make unexpected errors.  Gradually Nikita has been improving, until in this...

An interview by Oksana Tonkacheeva with personal coach to Russia's leading male and female gymnasts, Denis Ablyazin and Aliya Mustafina. Summary below (not word for word) - Next week we'll have the European Championships.  Denis Ablyazin will compete - but not, on this occasion, Aliya Mustafina. - It wasn't just my decision to train Aliya - it wasn't as if Aliya out of the blue knocked on my door and just asked me to work with her . There was a meeting of head coach Andrei Rodionenko, the head coach of the women's team Evgeny Grebyonkin, and Aliya's father.  Everything had to be carefully weighed up - working with an athlete like Mustafina is primarily a responsibility - I thought long and hard.  -  First, I had to explain to Aliya that there would be conditions, and that if she were not ready to fulfill them, we could not even begin.  I have had to make changes myself, not just inside the gym, but outside of it.  The  result t...

Sergei Starkin - image from Sports Express Sergei Starkin is part of a formidable father and son pairing for whom coaching gymnastics is a family affair.  His father, Valery Starkin, will be well known to gymnastics fans as the sharp-eyed, white-haired  Head Coach of the Burtasy School of Gymnastics in Penza, frequent home to the Russian National Championships.  The School has grown in importance over recent years: the success of homegrown World Champion, the impressive and powerful Denis Ablyazin, gave the Club its profile; Valeri Starkin's astute management of this facility has gained recognition and support from the Ministry of Sport; the recent alignment of 2012 Olympic Champion Aliya Mustafina to personal coach Sergei Starkin has reinforced the club's reputation across WAG as well as MAG.  There are even some who say that Valeri, with his strong ties within the Russian coaching hierarchy, long experience of management and influence, and links to Russia's most li...

The top seven gymnasts at Penza will compete for the six places on the Russian team for Euros, confirmed head coach Valery Alfosov today to Allsport. On the basis of the results of the national championships, the following gymnasts are in contention:  All Around : David Belyavski and Nikolai Kuksenkov Denis Ablyazin : floor, rings and vault Nikita Nagorny : floor and vault Mattvei Petrov : pommel horse Nikita Ignatyev : rings, p-bars and high bar Mikhail Kudashov : rings (he has a D value of 6.8 but was unable to show his best as he was still recovering from the effects of flu) At present, the reserve is Dmitri Lankin, who has potential on floor and parallel bars. As with the women, other gymnasts will be training for the competition and new names may still be added to the roster according to the results of control competitions. Alfosov stressed that almost the entire team had performed below par in Penza thanks to the effects of a nasty flu bug.  With another four weeks of tr...

An interview with Aliya, who is attending the competition in Penza; some brief coverage of the MAG competition; and a conversation with the Head of Burtasy School of Gymnastics, Valeri Starkin, can be found here -  http://www.penza-press.ru/lenta-novostey/73763/aliya-mustafina-priehala-v-penzu-na-chr-po-sportivnoj-gimnastike 'I really enjoy working with Sergei Valerivich' says Aliya of her new coaching arrangement, adding that it is great to have someone to help.  In an earlier interview she has said she and Sergei Starkin, who also coaches world gold medallist Denis Ablyazin, are working on upgrades to her bars and floor exercises.  She and Ablyazin train at separate times, in separate gyms; it is important to have the one to one attention of a coach, Aliya says. Valeri Starkin, Sergei's father and recently appointed to the national coaching staff, commented on the good atmosphere and competition, here in his home gym.  The Volga Federal District team (Pavlov, Kazac...

You will find the full results at Longines Timing's website here : http://www.longinestiming.com/Sport?sport=GG There are also live results at the FIG website : http://www.fig-docs.com/live_results/5529/5529.php Russia did pretty well everywhere except pommels, where they suffered one of their magnificent disasters, carrying four falls on that one event ... Ignatyev performed disappointingly in the all around, carrying two marks in the 12s.  Newcomers to the team, Stretovich and Polyashov, both performed creditably but unremarkably.  There is still time for them to make their mark at upcoming competitions as they progress to Rio.  The results show a team that appears more robust than this time last year; despite the pommel horse tussle, the team revived and regrouped in the following apparatus and, even without Garibov and Balandin, managed to stay in touch with their closest rivals. The team is in 5th place, closely matched with Britain, and all the gymnasts wi...

Head coach Andrei Rodionenko today confirmed that, by hook or by crook, Denis Ablyazin will travel to Nanning and participate in World Championships.  Ablyazin missed key finals in last week's Russia Cup, and has been suffering severe knee pain.  He is undergoing investigations in Munich at present.  An announcement about the nature of his injury is expected in the next few days. Rodionenko said he would be ready to take Ablyazin for his rings exercise only, where the Olympian has a realistic medal chance.  He also suggested that vault might be a possibility - 'even on one leg'.   In a report in Pravda, Rodionenko is also reported as saying that the knee injury was 'nothing serious'. Source : http://www.temapenza.ru/news/sports/item/7997/

Nikita Ignatyev with the top six gymnasts at Russia Cup this year.  Left to right - Roman Suetin (6th), Ivan Stretovich (5th), David Belyavski (2nd), Nikita Ignatyev, Mikhail Kudashov (3rd), Daniil Kazachkov (4th).  Courtesy RGF Nikita, a promising all arounder who has built his strength gradually from one competition to the next, is a repeat national level champion, having won the spring Russian Championships in 2012.  His win here was earned thanks to consistent performance.  His nearest rival, the occasionally brilliant David Belyavski, made too many mistakes to take the gold.   1991 born Mikhail Kudashov from Chelyabinsk, in third place, is one of Russia's 'reserve' gymnasts, unlikely to make the final line up for Nanning thanks to the prevalence of event specialists on the team. A noteable newcomer to the all around line up is fifth placed Ivan Stretovich, 1996 born and so due to progress to the senior team in 2015 alongside such youngsters as Artur Dalolya...