Interview with Vika brings up the R Word

Viktoria Komova gave a tv interview in late January while training at home in Voronezh.

There's nothing new or surprising in it, but it touches the inevitable (and unthinkable): her impending retirement. Yes, the dreaded R word of gymnastics.

We have been so lucky this quad with so many gymnasts from London still competing, and not just competing, competing at the highest level. But this also means that we will probably be facing a huge wave of retirements after Rio. Something I've been dreading since the clock struck 2016.

Half of the Russian senior national team (and most of their medal contenders) is veterans from London. Not only are their age and injuries working against them, but Russia has also proposed a bill that limits their athletes, only allowing two Olympic games for each. And in gymnastics, the Olympics are everything so competing and training elite after knowing you can't make the Olympics is unlikely. So Russia, who has been struggling to get new top level seniors, is going to have a hell of a time the next few years trying to build a new team. Although the gymnasts turning senior during the Tokyo quad shows a huge amount of promise, more so than this one did in my opinion.

But who cares about the struggles Rodionenkos are facing, when I have my personal misery to attend to. After Beijing was when I really started following gymnastics, so I'm really attached to these gymnasts that first made me fall in love with the sport, and it's incredibly difficult imagining life without them. We just got Vika back after years of wondering about her fate and now she's going to leave us again. Aliya was MIA for most of this year and even though she has made no direct comments about retiring after Rio (to my knowledge), it is *shudder* extremely likely with the injuries she's been carrying for years.

Please don't leave me, my Tsaritsa... 

*starts working on her 100-page eulogy for aliya*

I just hope these two make it to Beijing and have the competition of their lives there, they truly deserve it.

-----

And I just realized I forgot about the interview... Vika says that she's going to compete all 4 events and she's working on some upgrades and slowly getting back the difficulty she had in London. Any color of medal will be a victory for her. She's doing only 4 competitions this year: Russian Nationals, European Championships, Russian Cup and the Olympics and she's planning on retiring after Rio. Her mom also made some lasagna and pizza for her birthday and it was awesome. 

And my favorite bit of the interview: The European Games at Baku was the turning point for her after all of those years of injuries. The result of that competition didn't matter, but it was just her being there, the crowd cheering and her wanting to prove herself, starting to believe in herself again. She got her passion for gymnastics back.