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In a recent interview Viktoria Komova described the last few years as the hardest of her life. An endless cycle of training, getting injured and not competing. She lost the passion to train and quit several times, fought with Gennady Yelfimov, her coach since childhood, and broke off the partnership returning home to Voronezh. Her return to training and Round Lake happened after the head of the Russian team, Andrei Rodionenko, called and told her to return right away. I don't know what they discussed or how he got her to agree (maybe it was first just because her team needed her, maybe there was something more to it), but she returned, started training and eventually made up with Yelfimov.
She returned to competition this year successfully (at least in my mind), performing AA in European Games at Baku and winning a World title on uneven bars after an otherwise inconsistent competition in Glasgow. If she stays healthy (yeah right...), she'll have her former difficulty back by Rio. She's shown she can fight, now all she needs is confidence in herself.
After seeing the interview, I remembered a piece I wrote about Vika last year. She was in the middle of the funk she discussed during the interview and I was pretty pessimistic about her chances of return to competition. And I just thought it would be interesting to see what I wrote back then now that we know how this year went. There's also a link to the post on RRG that I was referencing.
This is the post in its entirety (originally published April 20th 2014 on tumblr):
My Thoughts about Komova (and the article in RRG)
I was thinking about writing down my feelings after hearing about the latest injury, but after reading this article from RRG, I decided to really do so, because Queen Elizabeth seems to be thinking along the same lines as I am. Is she really going to come back, does she even want to?
I really started wandering this after the news about her latest injury. I think the most of us had been wondering this while waiting for her comeback during last year, but now it all seems to make sense. I just feel like she peaked in 2010 and had the most fulfilling junior career she could have asked for. She probably was told all over again, how she, Musty, Nabs and Grishy would dominate the world one day and bring Russia its former glory back. And in 2010 it really looked like that.
But in 2011 Aliya and Vika were injured and Nabs wasn’t fulfilling her promises as an amazing junior. Vika had to compete with downgraded routines in Tokyo WC, made many mistakes and started her senior career with an extremely disappointing (only for her) AA silver. Same with the team competition.
For London she got her old routines back with even some new upgrades and had the highest difficulty in the world. She had Musty and Grishy by her side. As said earlier, they had probably been told since they were little girls that this was their Olympics and the others didn’t stand a chance against them. They would honor their Soviet heritage and bring gold back to Round Lake, where it belonged. But the Americans dominated and the Russians fell apart under the pressure. The team finals were probably even more devastating than we thought while watching it. (I mean, even Aliya was crying her eyes out, she never cries in competition. She’s usually happy for any color for a medal.)
And in the AA, Gabby came out of nowhere. She was talented but not a particularly successful junior. Same goes with her senior debut in 2011, it wasn’t exactly spectacular (her AA score was 57.657, okay, but nobody was thinking she would be the force she was in 2012). Vika had been on the top of the world for several years with everybody following her career. And in the AA, after that vault, she really fought. She did everything she could until the end and never gave up, unusual for her. She had the highest difficulty, best score in qualifying and this was the gold that was promised to her when she was just a tiny junior. And after doing everything in her power, carrying so many expectations, she lost. And it wasn’t even shared loss with the team, it was all her. And her first reaction was that she wanted o quit gymnastics all together. After two Olympic silvers that to her had ‘loser’ written all over them.
In the finals she came in looking defeated, made a tiny mistake (that she had actually been doing lot in rehearsals according to her) in the end of near perfect (probably worthy of gold) performance on bars, gave up completely and didn’t seem to care about beam.
And after the Olympics she took a long time to come back, injury after injury, recovering from pushing her body to the limits last year. It’s like the Olympic year took everything she had in her, both physically and mentally.
So is she really looking to come back in full force? Or is she just continuing with gymnastics because it’s familiar for her, she loves Round Lake and her team mates there, enjoys doing gymnastics for fun, and Russia needs her? Does she really want to compete at the level she used to, when she didn’t really seem to enjoy it? She enjoyed winning but the competition itself, I don’t know… I think the article is right comparing Aliya and Vika when it comes to their mentality and how they handle competition and defeat.
And the injuries. I’m not saying she is in any way causing them but she really does have bad luck (meningitis, several surgeries for that ankle and keeping injuring herself doing something like tripping while waiting for a bus etc.) and I just have a feeling that it’s not meant to be with her. And that together with the question of motivation.
I’m hoping I’m wrong.So in retrospect? I was wrong. She's stronger than I dared to believe. She lost her motivation, quit, but came back and regained her passion for gymnastics. And her UB gold this year was certainly meant to be. I'm hoping Rio is meant to be. I'm hoping a lot is meant to be for her.
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Read a translation of the recent interview with Vika on RRW.
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