Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Anna Pavlova, who last competed for her home country of Russia at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and has maintained a solid presence on the domestic circuit since, today announced that she will prepare to compete for the Azerbaijan national team at the 2015 European championships, which will take place in the Azerbaijan capital city of Baku.  Her mother, who is Anna's personal coach, will take up a position as Azerbaijan's national coach.  Working alongside Anna will be 2011 World Championships team member, 2012 Olympic reserve Yulia Inshina from Voronezh.  On the men's side, rings specialist Konstantin Pluzhnikov will also make the move to the Azerbaijan team.  All the gymnasts will be working at home in Russia, as there is no equipment available in Azerbaijan.  Pluzhnikov is considered a world medal contender on his specialist piece, the rings, and Pavlova has regularly beaten national team members on vault, beam and floor in Russian domestic competitions. Pavlova says

Sheer charm.

Moscow Dynamo are developing a video project where sportsmen across different disciplines are sharing their sports. Here , Emin Garibov shares gymnastics with Dynamo footballer Yuri Kotov. You can also find pictures at Moscow Dynamo's Facebook page.

Evgenia Shelgunova.  Picture: Olga Terentyeva Valentina Rodionenko has outlined the Russian team's plans for the coming months in a recent press statement , highlighting the next major competition for March 2014,the Russian Championships in Penza.  This will be the qualifying event for the European Championships, to take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, next spring. All the team's major players are back in training now, but not at the most intense level, says Rodionenko. The gymnasts are now working with their coaches to develop new difficulty for their exercises, or to change the composition of their existing routines. 'It is very important that all of them begin the new season in optimal condition', said the head coach.  'On the 22nd, the teams will go home after their current training camp at Round Lake. They return on December 4th, and this year they will go home again on the 20th December.' Olympic all around silver medallist Viktoria Komova

The RGF has now published links to the full video of  'Countdown', a programme in which the Seoul Olympics gymnastics competition of 1988 was discussed, with some comparison to today.  It is in total an hour long programme.  I wonder if anyone is feeling strong enough to provide some summary translation of the second part, or of fragments they feel are interesting?  I am copying Captain Hook's translations of the first part below, from his comments to my original post about this discussion. My post turned out to be somewhat out of context with the overall programme so I am glad for an opportunity to present the video in its entirety, in the hope that a fuller translation will set the record straight.   Many thanks again to the Captain! Part 1 Part 2 Part 1 Part 2 Host: This Olympics ( I guess he means 1988 Olympics- beginning of this video is cut off ) was very successful for both soviet teams, men and women. They won a lot of gold medals. In other wor

I hadn't seen this fascinating documentary before last week.  It provides some great history on the heritage of the sport.  In German, with English subtitles. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Mustafina's beam at the Antwerp World Championships may well have expressed the Code to its fullest artistic potential in that event final, on that day. But what has the additive Code, and other progressive changes to the sport, done to beam? One of the most beautiful beam routines ever can be found here .

I have yet to source a full translation of this 2nd November television discussion between National Coaches Rodionenko, Olympic Champion Aliya Mustafina and 1988 Olympic Champion and FIG judge Elena Shevchenko.  Some fragmentary details provided by Rachael Liv on Gymfever (:-)) suggest that it addresses the results of the 2013 World Championships again, with Andrei Rodionenko providing reasons that his team did not perform as well as, perhaps, the Russian public had expected.  Pretty much a re-run of his earlier press interview that appeared on VTB.  Shevchenko apparently mentions that the biggest worry during her competitive years was making the Soviet team, so evidently some comparisons are being made between today's gymnastics and the Golden Era. If anyone has time to add any translations to the comments on this post, we would all be very grateful ... I know that translating such a discussion in its entirety is painstaking and arduous ... NOTE : PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE COMME

I like to think that I inspired this film ... I probably didn't though. Just a bit of mid week silliness.

Adrian McArdle pointed me to this cute - but impressive - video of Elena Zamolodchikova, aged 13 or 14, competing in South Africa in 1996. Four years later, she would be a double Olympic champion, on vault and floor. What an incredible, if occasionally somewhat erratic, competitor she was.  My first view of Super Zamo was in a junior team competition in 1995 in Guildford, in the south east of England.  Her team mates included the peerless Elena Produnova, and the great Russian promise of that time, Evgenia Kuznetsova. Elena Zamolodchikova was then a tiny scrap of a thing,  every cubic millimetre packed with dynamic energy.  She competed only vault but charged the gymnastics hall with electricity.  I'll never forget that fierce, reckless sprint towards to the vault.  She possessed energy, motivation and skill at a time when Russia's gymnasts were powerful, innovative and fearless, a thunderbolt of sheer grace.  She impressed me in a way I will never forget.  This video remin