Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Picture by Alexander Vilf, courtesy of Sports Express Legendary coach Leonid Arkayev talks about his personal gymnastics history, the success of the Soviet team and Simone Biles in this summary of a Sport Express interview .  He also shares his opinion of the current Russian gymnastics regime. There are coaches whose stories you don't need to tell at great length, because the very name has become a brand. All you need to do is to open the file, and read that for 32 years, Arkayev headed first the men's gymnastics team, and then the female.  63 times his athletes became world champions.  31 times they won at the Olympics. We haven't taken silver and bronze into account, but I found the figure: Arkayev's boys and girls made it onto the podium more than 70 times. *** - One of the USSR national swimming team once told me that the Soviet system of training was very effective, but it was accompanied by a large number of "victims" - those who d...