Russian Gymnastics - National Coaches, the senior team

Personal and national coaches working together : Ksenia Afansyeva's personal coach, Marina Nazarova, celebrates with  Russia's successful women's team at the London Olympics, with bars coach (now team coach)  Evgeny Grebyonkin

The RGF has published its full team list again.  It has already been released once, and you can find a review of the gymnasts of the senior men's and women's teams here.

For now, however, I wanted to publish in English the list of the national coaches of the senior team.  I will look at the coaches of the junior and youth teams in another post. This list is clearly an official document, bearing the stamp of the RGF and the signatures of several dignitaries, Andrei Rodionenko included, but it most likely will change over the coming months.  It may well be produced more for administrative purposes than for public consumption, so read with caution.  There is some meaty information all the same.  What may be of note is that the senior coaching team has reduced its numbers from last year's 21 to this year's 17, so the senior Russians have four fewer national coaches compared to 2013.  Overall, however, the national team (senior and junior) employs 39 coaches overall, compared to last year's 37, meaning that there are more coaches working on the junior and youth teams than previously.

A little background.  A 'national coach' participates in the training of team members alongside their individual personal coaches, but will coach all members of the national team at various times.  A 'personal coach' will have worked with a gymnast one to one at his or her home club, sometimes from childhood, and will generally remain as the hub of the gymnast's coaching.

National coaches receive their salary from the national team, centrally, and are generally not personal coach to any particular gymnast.  Personal coaches are generally not employed by the national team; their salary will be paid by the club they work for locally, to which their gymnast is attached.  Personal coaches will receive a bonus paid by the national team if and when their gymnast wins a medal at a major competition.  They do not always travel with their gymnasts to national training camp as they have other coaching responsibilities at home.  At the national training centre, gymnasts will train with all the national coaches and choreographers on the national team, at various times throughout their career, as well as with their personal coaches at home.

I hope this is quite clear! This list provides details of the national coaches, and not the personal coaches.

There are exceptions to this.  Viktoria Komova's personal coach, Gennady Elfimov, is listed as a national coach.  This, presumably, means he receives his salary from the national team, perhaps as recognition of Komova's importance.   I would not expect to see him coaching other gymnasts, so this does seem to be some kind of reward arrangement rather than meaning that he has become a coach to all the national team members.  The only other personal coach included on the national team list is Sergei Starkin (Denis Ablyazin), but he appears as a coach to the junior team ...

Aliya Mustafina's personal coach, Raisa Ganina, has been removed from the list of national coaches, compared to last year.  I do not know the background to this, but she is still Aliya's personal coach at their home club of Moscow CSKA.  Similarly, Ksenia Afanasyeva's personal coach, Marina Nazarova, does not appear on this list. Elfimov's inclusion is the exception, rather than the exclusion of these personal coaches, so there is probably nothing to be alarmed about.

The presentation of the list has changed somewhat.  In previous years, there have been coaches with particular specialist responsibilites.  For example, Marina Bulashenko was last year a specialist choreographer for the beam, while Vasily Ivanov was a specialist floor and vault coach.  Now, all the coaches and choreographers are shown as having 'all around' responsibilities.  This may only be a change in the way the list is presented, but it may also reflect working changes.  We will just have to watch to see what the coaches do at the competitions.  They do all have their individual strengths; for example Grebyonkin was a fantastic bars specialist.

I cannot pretend that the job title translations are literal, but I have rendered them to give a feel for the hierarchy.  Therefore, Andrei Rodionenko is Head Coach for both men and women, while Evgeny Grebyonkin is Team Coach for the women, and Anton Stolyar is an ordinary coach (if coaches ever can be ordinary).  Kirill Skakodub's job description is 'Nachalnik', meaning 'Captain' of the team.  I have looked for some clarification and found it on the website, where he is listed as an 'Administrator of the Training Process'.  I remember a discussion I had with Vladimir Zaglada about this - it is an important job that involves coordinating the training efforts of all the gymnasts and coaches.

In the hope that this post enlightens more than confuses, please find the transliterated list below :-)

Name	Date of birth	Job title	Discipline	Citizen of	Years on the team
Andrei Rodionenko	7.9.42	Head Coach	Men, women, all around	Moscow	41
Valentina Rodionenko	18.9.36	Team Coach	Men, women, all around	Moscow	33
Alfosov, Valery	13.2.53	Team Coach	Men, all around	Moscow	28
Grebyonkin, Evgeny	26.9.1968	Team Coach	Women, all around	Volgograd oblast – Volzhki	8
Duzhno, Andrei	10.12.74	Coach	Men, all around	Moscow oblast – Lobnya	8
Elfimov, Gennady	27.2.64	Coach	Women, all around	Voronezh	22
Ivanov, Vasily	23.3.59	Coach	Women, all around	Chuvasian Republic, Cheboksary	7
Kuksenkov, Yuli	3.12.58	Coach	Men, all around	Vladimir	Since 2013
Stolyar, Anton	5.4.81	Coach	Women, all around	Vladimir	1
Bulashenko, Marina	19.6.58	Choreographer	Women, all around	Rostov on Don	6
Burova, Olga	22.4.77	Choreographer	Women, all around	Volgograd	6
Liskov, Konstantin	1.1.67	Doctor	Men, all around	Yaroslavl	9
Timonkin, Vladimir	12.10.66	Doctor	Women, all around	Yaroslavl	12
Yugai, Konstantin	10.12.66	Doctor	Men, women, all around	Tomsk	Since 2012
Blyushke, Alexei	8.5.72	Masseur	Men, all around	Moscow	12
Fyodorin, Kirill	24.3.87	Masseur	Women, all around	Tulsk Oblast	Since 2013
Skakodub, Kirill	14.11.62	?Captain? of the team	Men, women, all around	Moscow	9