Skip to main content

Ksenia Afanasyeva should compete floor, vault at Europeans - Valentina Rodionenko

Twice Olympian Ksenia Afanasyeva with the gold medal she won on floor at the Universiade last summer

Russia's most senior female gymnast, Ksenia Afanasyeva, is recovering well from an ankle operation, and expected to be ready to compete on floor and vault in May's European Championships, said Russian coach Valentina Rodionenko in an interview with press agency Itar-Tass this weekend.  

Afanasyeva has suffered from ankle pain since well before the 2012 Olympics, and after a busy first half of  2013 the injury forced her out of the Antwerp World Championships.  A first operation carried out by Russian doctors last year did not help ease the pain.  'We are very pleased that the second operation, done by German doctors, was successful', said Valentina.

First year senior Maria Kharenkova has also been mentioned as in the running for a place on the Europeans team, and in a February interview Aliya Mustafina also stated her desire to compete in Sofia (May 12th to 18th).

Good luck to Ksenia and to all the Russian team as they prepare for the Russian national championships (31st March to 6th April) and then Europeans.

Link to the report : http://www.sports.ru/others/gymnastics/158505663.html

Comments

  1. Thanks to Veronika who has pointed to a comment by Ksenia on VK to the effect that she is preparing vault and would be happy to help on floor, but didn't exactly expect to do so.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who will travel to Berne? A Russian mystery

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 ...

Maria Filatova: Russian Sparrow Made in the USSR

Maria Filatova – the first ever picture taken of her doing gymnastics! By kind permission of Maria Filatova Kourbatova My first memory of Maria Filatova is a little girl with huge, white ribbons in her hair, so tiny she seemed to have to stand on tiptoe to be able to see over the balance beam.  At 4’ 6” tall, she was the smallest competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, yet she was already part of the Soviet senior team, competing alongside such established stars as Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Elvira Saadi and Olga Korbut.  The ‘Siberian Sparrow’, trained in Leninsk-Kuznetsk by Innokenty Mametyev since a very early age, celebrated her 15 th birthday on the 19 th July 1976, the day of the team final.  That night, she slept with her first – not her last - Olympic gold medal beneath her pillow. For all her cuteness, Maria Filatova was a fearsome gymnast and competitor.  If the crowd were awed by the pyrotechnics of Romanian technician Nadia Comaneci, they we...

Alexander Alexandrov - some better translations and additions

Isa Alexandrova has kindly translated Alexander's interview word for word.  It gives a  different emphasis in some places to my summary, and adds some more information, so I wanted readers to have access to this right away.  With many thanks to Isa. 1) Alexander didn't quite imply that he is ready to come back to Russia by the end of this year if there is an offer. He said that "it is still hurtful for me to think the way I was treated in 2012. However, enough time had passed, that I was able to better analyze the situation, and I understand that perhaps I did some things not the best way. At that time, I was working for the "final result" and did not pay attention to much else. Mutko and I had a conversation before I left, where he let me know that he didn't want me to leave. Now, the only way I could talk about my coming back is when and if he calls me. I am not going to invite myself back. I am ready to come back to Russia if I am wanted, but I do...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more