Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Head of the Burtasy School of Gymnastics, Valery Starkin (father to Sergei Starkin, who coaches Aliya Mustafina and Denis Ablyazin) has spoken to Penza Pravda about Aliya's bronze medal performance in the AA.  Sergei has trained many Olympic athletes, including rhythmic group members  Natalia Lavrova and Olesya Belugina. 'The result can be considered good, if not excellent.  We knew that Aliya would be able to compete for silver or bronze, and that the gold would only be obtained if the leader, Simone Biles, made a mistake. ... Aliya managed to hold onto her third position despite fierce competition from a Chinese gymnast; her experience helped her a lot. The marking was proper.  Aliya missed some connections, acrobatic elements and so the complexity of the D score was reduced.  For example on the beam it was 5.3, and also in the floor, despite the fact that usually Aliya scores better there.  If you add back in the difference, she could easily have be...

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...

Aliya Mustafina and team candidate Seda Tutkhalyan - both from Moscow Five days left before the MAG European Championships open in Switzerland, and Russian gymnast Nikita Nagorny is posting videos of himself practicing a full twisting Roche vault - I wonder if he will compete it in Berne?  The men's team seems fairly well prepared and ready to travel as announced some weeks ago - Kuksenkov, Belyavski, Ignatyev, Nagorny, Ablyazin.  But the composition of the women's team, who will travel to their first major competition of 2016 next week, seems somewhat undecided.  Will Natalia Kapitonova make her major senior debut in June, or will Seda Tutkhalyan, her dynamic yet unpredictable rival, grace Russia's team?  Or will other gymnasts be brought into play; will further, unexpected, changes be made? If head coach Valentina Rodionenko's recent announcement is to be believed, it is a simple case of replacing the injured Maria Paseka (a vault specialist) with Natalia ...

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...

This September's Russia Cup, one of the qualifying events for the World Championships, will take place at the Burtasy School of Gymnastics in Penza.  This is a late change from the planned location of Ekaterinburg. Valentina Rodionenko reports that, following a visit by inspectors, the facilities at Ekaterinburg just aren't good enough for such a major competition - there is no warm up gym, and the equipment is not state of the art. In Penza, the gym has benefitted from a gift of brand new equipment from the Ministry of Sport in recognition of the achievements of World and Olympic Champion Denis Ablyazin, who trains with coach Sergei Starkin in Penza. The School has become almost a permanent fixture for national championships recently and has developed as a power base for Russian gymnastics in general.  Head coach Valeri Starkin, father of the better known Sergei Starkin, was recently elevated to a position as national coach.  This change took place almost simultaneously ...

Aliya manages a troublesome line of questioning during this Russia 2 interview A great series of short interviews with some of the main players in last week's European Games - Nikita Ignatyev, Sergei Starkin and Aliya Mustafina.  Many, many thanks to Olesya Mikheeva who did the translation.   Nikita : Right away, I got a little upset, you know, falling on one of the easier elements.  I had already done all the hardest stuff, I probably let myself go emotionally for a second and lost concentration. Nikita : "I'm very happy because it's my first me dal in the all around, usually it's even hard to qualify into it." Sergei : "New programme on bars, new programme on floor, and after this competition we'll correct form to prepare for Worlds, so I think in the fall she'll have different form and a stronger programme." Aliya : "I won't keep this music for long. I'll perform to it at Worlds but then I'm going to change it." Inter...

Aliya Mustafina and Sergei Starkin - courtesy of the RGF  The Russian Olympic Committee's Information Service has just released this interview with the coach of European Games champion, Aliya Mustafina. - How do you work with Aliya Mustafina? - We just get on. We had predicted her victory here, knowing that Aliya is not only the undisputed leader of the national team, but also the main favourite in European gymnastics. Today, we are right, and very happy. - Not everything turned out the way Aliya would like.  Are there no plans to increase the complexity of her programmes? - Yes, for the Olympic Games in Rio, we plan to upgrade vault, uneven bars and floor exercise. In addition, we want to improve the quality of performance. At this competition we have developed new routines on the uneven bars and the floor exercise. This is a big step forward. - Mustafina wobbled a little on the beam, perhaps the most difficult gymnastic apparatus. How can you avoid t...

Aliya Mustafina today with her gold medal.  Courtesy of the RGF . It wasn't a classic all around competition.  The format saw to that, with many of the best gymnasts left behind on the bench thanks to the one-gymnast-per-country rule.  It would have been nice to see Komova, or Germany's Elisabeth Seitz on the competition floor, but that wasn't possible.  We did, however, get to see some vintage Mustafina along the way.  Another gold medal for the gymnastics Queen only serves to underline that her multifarious victories have been anything but fluke. Russian Aliya Mustafina came to the competition as the strong favourite, but she must have had a few sleepless nights during the break since Monday's team final.  You can't rely on anything in gymnastics; competitions are regularly decided by the most ridiculously small decimal margin.  In this case, any slip could have allowed Switzerland's Giulia Steingrueber to repeat her gold medal from the...

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...

There is a fabulous picture gallery of Day 1 EF at the Russian Champs on the RGF website.  Scroll down to enjoy a few highlights. Aliya Mustafina was there to support her team mates.  Here she is with coach Sergei Starkin, happy after his gymnast Denis Ablyazin won two golds, on floor (shared with Nikita Nagorny) and rings.  Find the results here - http://sportgymrus.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/finaly-v-otdel-ny-h-vidah-1-den-muzh.pdf Viktoria Komova had a little bit of disappointment when she fell from bars and missed a medal there.  Here she is consoled by head coach Andrei Rodionenko. Daria Spiridinova celebrates a third top scoring routine on the uneven bars.  Here she is with returning Olympian Ksenia Afanasyeva (back on floor tomorrow!), Moscow's Artur Dalolyan and, to the left,Youth Olympics  Champion and first year senior, Seda Tutkhalyan. Nikita Ignatyev signs a calendar for a fan. 'Hello ...'  Gold medallist on floor (shared with ...