Vika is not retiring...yet

Russian press is starting to catch up on Viktoria Komova and her announcement to withdraw from training ahead of Rio. And there's some good news: she isn't retiring. At least according to her father.

TASS spoke with Vika's father Aleksandr Komov and he said that Vika is still planning on returning, if her health allows.

"Vika really wants to return to the gym, but her health doesn't permit it. She said that the pain is too much to endure and train with now, but it wasn't a statement about her future in the sport. She can't prepare for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, therefore there's no point in training at the moment."

"Right now she needs to concentrate fully on her health and if the doctors can help her, it's likely that we'll be pleased to see her returning to gymnastics." 

They also spoke to Grebs who said he had no idea what was going on with Vika.

"Vika is not at the training camp, I don't have any information about this."

I find this slightly concerning.  This reminds me of her other heath struggles during the past few years, when she was just over it, left her coach and refused to return to the camp. No one really knew what was going on with her and Andrei ended up calling her demanding her to come back.

As usual, V-Rod also has no idea what's going on, but is still giving out comments pretending that she does, so she has a completely different point of view on this. This is from R-sport.

"Komova is finished with gymnastics because of her health. Yes, she is retiring. She has some problems with her back and can't work to full capacity, that's why she doesn't want to stay. She approached her coach about wanting to quit, they talked with her father and made the decision together."

The other publications are at the moment just recycling these two comments, nothing from Vika herself, even on social media.

I believe that she probably has the intention to return, but whether she can is another story. It seems like she just has one of those bodies that's not build to last in a sport like this. Perhaps the universe can only give us a little bit of her at a time, it makes us truly appreciate the beauty. So unfair.

And here's a little something found on tumblr (originally from here), I couldn't have described the 2012 Vika better.

On the other hand, Komova, who is unmistakably Russian, still looked like a character in a Chekhov play, acting out a grand drama on the balance beam. You could see the nerves in her small face, the anxiety pooling in those huge blue Slavic eyes. And like all the Russian gymnasts, she is a classically trained ballerina, and she moves with a kind of layered intricacy, beautiful and strangely melancholy at once… And one could imagine Komova as gymnastics’ tragic heroine, fragile and beautiful, nervily expressive of the sport’s flaws even as she accomplished something extraordinary. But to imagine these narratives is to realize how complicated the stories really are. To be a young woman dedicated to a sport that spits you out so quickly is to be at once incredibly lucky and incredibly challenged. Where, again, will each of these young women find so receptive and expansive an outlet for her ambition, her self-determination, her strength? Can they find a new, meaningful purpose, or does being thrust out of the sport in their early 20s leave them almost permanently at loose ends?