Skip to main content

David Belyavski interview

Image
By

 I am just recording here some notes on a media interview with Russia’s MAG team captain.  David uses quite a lot of rhetorical questions here in his responses, and parries as the interviewer tries to get closer to his thoughts on the wartime ban in international competition, and the idea of competing as a neutral individual.  


Read this in the context of what we know about  growing repression in the Russian Federation.  This could well be considered to be a historic document on wavering freedom of speech in Russia as the country approaches the nightmare of total mobilisation to support the war in Ukraine.  

I’m sharing this from my Facebook post.


Quite an interesting interview with David Belyavski.  He is very skilled now at speaking in public.


He says he hasn’t lost motivation because of the international ban on Russian athletes, he loves gymnastics and will continue for as long as he can be part of the national team.  He likes coaching but has no particular plans to take up work at present.

He doesn’t intend to compete under a neutral flag; he has already done this once.  In his opinion there is no chance of Russia sending a team to the Olympics.  The requirements set for individual neutral participation are not easy for athletes to meet, for example they have to pay their own travel expenses.  Gymnasts from Dynamo and CSKA are disallowed.  Changing nationality isn’t workable in the time frame before the Olympics and besides, why would a gymnast who had trained and lived in Russia all their life want to change their nationality?  Competition is less interesting without international gymnasts present and during such competitions as Euros, the gymnasts watch and want to be there.  But they can’t and who knows what the situation will be for the 2028 Olympics? 

His condition now is good, but not top - he saves that for the Olympics.  Daniil Marinov is good but needs some international experience and to strengthen his content on all the apparatus but specially pommels and floor.  His p bars and vault are already good.   

The gymnasts are being paid the same as they were when they were competing internationally and the Federation is looking after them well.  


https://metaratings.ru/blog/intervyu-olimpiiskogo-chempiona-po-sportivnoy-gimnastike-davida-belyavskogo/


Paraphrased and edited version  from a Google translate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘My daughter likes gymnastics. For us, this is the big success’. Aliya Mustafina talks to Match TV

By
Via VK.com.  Google translate A big interview with Aliya Mustafina was published on MATCH!. We provide a small excerpt below, and the full version is available on the website at the link below  ❓ Aliya, you are now the head coach of the junior artistic gymnastics team. What does your typical day look like? 💜 My current life is similar to what it was when I was competing. In the morning, I have breakfast and go to work by 9:00, we train for four hours, have lunch, rest and train for another three hours. During the training camp, the athletes live at the base. They live and train on the same territory. ❓ Do you manage the gymnasts' personal trainers or do you evenly distribute the responsibilities? 💜 We work in contact with the personal trainers, I listen to their opinions. For example, if the trainer believes that their athlete needs to be given a little rest or do fewer repetitions of a particular exercise, we do so. ❓ Describe the current generation of children. Do they nee...
3 comments
Read more

Alexander Alexandrov in his own words 1 - A Difficult Decision

By
Alexander Alexandrov with his daughter, Isa, at the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Rio.  (c) Alexander Alexandrov Russian coach Alexander Alexandrov has been prominent in the sport since 1983, when he came to the public eye as coach of the brilliant Dmitri Bilozerchev.  He has over thirty years’ experience of coaching World and Olympic Champions both in the country of his birth and in his adopted home, Houston, USA.  In his most recent position as Head Coach of the national women's artistic gymnastics (WAG) team for Russia, he quite simply resurrected his country’s gymnastics programme, re-establishing his team at the very top of the sport.  Prior to Alexandrov’s appointment, at the 2008 Olympics, Russian WAG had walked away empty handed, without medals.  At last year’s London Olympics, artistic gymnastics was one of Russia’s most successful sports.  Alexandrov’s Russia won the most gymnastics medals of any country competing, and his athlete Al...
11 comments
Read more

Fact or fiction? The press, gymnastics and pregnancy doping

By
It was a Sunday morning.  I was drinking my coffee and contemplating the day ahead - a workout at the gym, shopping for groceries, an evening reading a book, or catching up on last night's episodes of crime thriller The Bridge .  How nice it was not to have to think about work for a day. Then I saw it - a story about the history of doping in The Observer .  Interesting reading. Of course, cheating is as old as the hills.  It is, unfortunately, human nature for some people to try to gain easy advantage in any kind of competition.  That is why we have laws, rules, ethical guidelines.  People who cheat should face justice and shouldn't complain when they are found out. But the story about pregnancy doping bothered me.  Hadn't that been found to be fictional?  The author began with Olga Kovalenko's allegations made in 1994 - but the rumours had started way back in 1991 with the documentary series More Than A Game .  The practice...
3 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more