Evgeny Grebyonkin 'We should expect new names at these World Championships'

Olympic vault medallist Maria Paseka practices floor in training recently

An interview with Head Coach for the women, Evgeny Grebyonkin, is summarised below.

There are only a few days to go before the world championships, and there are still some gymnasts who are suffering from illnesses and injury and cannot compete - Grishina, Afanasyeva, Komova.

The girls had their day off on Sunday, and so on Monday we'll see how they are doing. Nabiyeva is expected to be in the all around final, and we also hope to see her in vault and bars.

Rodionova will go on beam - this is her first competition, so we don't know what to expect, as she didn't even compete much at junior level internationally. She doesn't have particularly high D values, so the main purpose of this competition is to give her experience. Rodionova is a girl for the future, she is building her difficulty. We are just hoping that this will be a positive start for her and give her a good base for the future.

We've always had problems with beam, and it's a risky piece. It's possible that you can perform well in training, but then suddenly in competition things go wrong. The beam is a little like a road block for us; as a team, we need to get through without falling, and then move on. It's 10 cm wide, and the new Code requires that the girls perform difficult combinations in order to achieve high D values. The connections bring a degree of risk. We do have juniors who have D values of 7, but we have to wait and see how they can perform once they make the senior team.

The interviewer points out the opposite situation - where veterans develop from being specialists into multi-eventers, as in the case of Afanasyeva and Paseka. Grebyonkin says, we can only help them, everything is in their hands.

Will Maria Paseka fulfill her goal of competing on three pieces, vault, bars and floor? She already did this at the Russia Cup, but in the World Championships, let's wait and see. It will depend on her health.

The girls have health problems. Maria Paseka is in pain; Aliya has been in bed with a temperature. Has Aliya overcome the common cold? No - she is still sick. Is it too risky to try to the new combinations on bars, given the state of Aliya's health? We don't have much choice, given the timing of the competition. It is risky.

One of the Chinese athletes has a D value on bars of 6.9 ... Grebyonkin says it's a different matter, presenting such difficulty at a World Championships compared to smaller competitions, and you never know what will happen. 'No one is foolproof. Sport is sport.'

Our rivals here will be the same as usual, USA, China, Romania. Brazil will be here too, and they will be strong in the acrobatics, and vaulting. There are also a lot of gymnasts specialising on the individual apparatus. There are very many more gymnasts competing here than at the European Championships. This is the first World Championships of the new cycle, so there will be new names. For Russia, there are fewer gymnasts coming through because in the years 1996, 1997, life was hard and fewer girls could participate in gymnastics. There isn't much we can do about this as it's a historical issue, we will just have to do our best. We have about three or four gymnasts coming through.

In the next two days before we depart for Antwerp, we have to try to make sure that everyone remains healthy, and that we don't have any injuries. Paseka is ill and Nabiyeva went home for a day or two recently to heal a small injury. Kuksenkov dislocated his finger the other day, and now his participation is in question. Such injuries can interfere with the gymnasts' competition readiness and the way that they perform.

But our spirits are rising, and when we arrive in Antwerp, we will be ready to fight.

Ksenia Afanasyeva has already begun training again after her ankle injury, and she will be ready to compete in Mexico in November. But we are unsure about the status of Komova and Grishina. Vika will only be discharged from hospital on the 27th September and Nastia is still in hospital. We will just have to deal with things as they develop. The next major competition is not until May - the Europeans.

This year is the first of the new Olympiade, and it's always difficult. There are new rules. This World Championships is a kind of testing ground, where we will work out what needs to be done for the coming three years, in preparation for Rio.

With many thanks to Lifje who gave me the link to the Russian language interview.