Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Some pictures and a short video of Viktoria, Aliya and Katya Kramarenko are available here. The girls are benefitting from a last few rays of sun before returning to chilly Moscow for winter training. The location, Sochi, will of course be the home of next year's Winter Olympics.  Russia's oligarchs and government have invested in significant changes to the infrastructure there, including the building of training facilities.  Andrei Rodionenko has suggested some of these be adapted post-Games to provide the Russian gymnasts with a  mild weather winter training retreat, so no doubt this publicity is part of that lobby, as well as providing motivation to the team.

Viktoria Komova celebrates her 18th birthday today, and in celebration Voronezh residents made this roadside tribute to the Olympic silver medallist.  Happy Birthday, Viktoria! Picture courtesy of Sovietski Sport Slightly less happily, Viktoria's mother, Vera Kolesnikova, has now confirmed that Vika will miss this spring's Russian Championships, and European Championships, to rest a back strain.  The Russian Ministry of Sport has elaborated, with translation courtesy of Alar at the All Around Forum : 'Viktoria will be in Voronezh where she'll continue to train lightly and do some conditioning. She's excused from participating at Russian Championships and Euros, but will prepare for Worlds. Nothing serious was found with her back. Her pains were attributed to delayed puberty and it was decided that she has not fully recovered from the workload before the Olympics yet. She was given a month to recover physically and mentally.' I wish Viktoria a ...

Viktoria Komova, born 30th January 1995, celebrates her birthday today.  Happy Birthday, Viktoria! Have a lovely day. Time to revisit a picture gallery posted last year ... amd to hope for a good year for Viktoria and her fans. I was doing something far more important, researching an article, when these pictures of Viktoria Komova  caught my eye. They are far from the standard gymnastics pictures of gymnasts celebrating, commiserating, or caught in the midst of their most graceful pose.  Not the best, most aesthetic images to view.  When looking at pictures of gymnasts I am often conscious of selecting the ones taken from the most flattering angle, avoiding the shot with the bent legs, the out of control arms. I took a different viewpoint here, choosing Komova at the most stressed, the least stagey point of her work.  These pictures capture Komova in flight, in the height of motion and effort.  There is no contrivance to them, no trained pose or paus...

Things are a little quiet at the moment, though I do expect to update with a couple of interesting features in the coming week or so.  In the meantime, enjoy this picture gallery of Olympic all around silver medallist Viktoria Komova.  Viktoria Komova, September 2012