Meet the Team: Aliya Mustafina (I)

This introduction is going to be different from the rest because My Tsaritsa deserves it, and it's impossible to explain Queen Aliya in only a few paragraphs. So I ended up dividing her introduction to two separate posts, the first one (this one, to be exact) is going to be about her career before the Olympics, and the second one (to be published later today or tomorrow) will focus on what she has in store for Rio.
-----
Aliya Mustafina. My Tsaritsa. Queen Aliya. Musty. Conqueror of the Podium. When I was little, my mother used to say that a loved child has many names, and it certainly applies to Aliya. She is the team captain in Rio and a London veteran. A London Olympic Champion. She's also my favorite gymnast of all time. And she's awesome. And I've been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out how to sum up her awesomeness and it has proven to be impossible. It's too much, she's too awesome. She's the ultimate BAMF. Thank you and goodbye.

Aliya was born in 1994 in Yegorievsk, Russia (Moscow Oblast) to a Tatar father and Russian mother. She was introduced to gymnastics by her Olympic wrestler father, who believed that children needed to do sports, because it was healthy. She was a determined and independent child, who navigated the Moscow metro transit system at a very young age to take her and her little sister Nailya to gym. Her father has often told the story of how she cut her finger and and was told to keep it elevated to help with bleeding and swelling; Aliya went to bed and fell asleep and still managed to keep her finger up throughout the night. She was that determined and disciplined, even as a child.

She was also a performer. You can see from the old videos, that she had that something. Natural charisma and a touch of perfection perhaps? I don't know. But she knew how to deliver even back then.

Her professional gymnastics career started young and she first emerged to the international gymnastics scene in 2006 as a promising junior. Russia's gymnastics program was struggling on the senior level after the retirement of their former leader, Svetlana Khorkina, but they had an extremely deep pool of talented juniors and while successful, Aliya was often outshined by her equally talented teammates. At the age of 13, she was the 2008 Junior European Champion with her team, and placed second all around after her teammate, worst competitor and best friend, Tatiana Nabieva.

Beijing Olympics happened later that year and while Aliya was still 13, a junior and not eligible for Beijing, the competition provided the backdrop for much of her future career. Beijing was a disaster for the Russian women's team, who came home with no medals. The once mighty gymnastics power had fallen hard, and needed either a saving angel, or a strong leader. Aliya grew up to be both.

Aliya's coach from her childhood (Dina Kamalova) left for the USA and she was now coached by Aleksandr Aleksandrov, who was also Russia's head coach after the retirement of Leonid Arkayev. They were very close and the partnership was successful, but not without its problems. Aliya's father told Aleksandrov to check his heart medication when he agreed to coach his willful daughter, and Aleksandrov was famously quoted describing Aliya's character as difficult. Something, that was quickly picked up by media and woven into her narrative for many years.

The girl is very talented, but with a difficult character. However, you don't find much complacency among champions. -- Aleksandr Aleksandrov

Aliya turned senior in 2010 along with a few of her other talented teammates, notably her best friend Tatiana Nabieva, who had kept beating her when she was a junior. Under Aleksandrov's tutelage, the Russians were thriving under the new code that had them combine their old-timey elegance and beauty with the ever increasing demands for acrobatic difficulty. With teams that had many new seniors, the Russians first became the European Champions, and for the first (and last) time ever World Champions. It was at the World Championships, when Aliya first emerged as the leading Russian gymnast.

There comes a gymnast with the name of Mustafina who is so complete, so good on all four events, and being so different. —Nadia Comaneci

What made Aliya so special was the all around, she had no apparent weaknesses, but not only that, she had no overwhelming strengths either. She was capable of winning gold on each individual event. She had the most difficult routines in the competition and she seemed to embody the new code, the ideal gymnast with beauty and elegance together in harmony with difficult acrobatics. She was also a fighter, and excelled under pressure, showing everyone her best like it was nothing, even her mistakes looked elegant. In addition to leading her team to a historical win, first World Championships team gold, she won the all around gold, and qualified to every individual final. She finished the competition with vault, uneven bars and floor silver, but fell and was left without a medal in the beam final. She also competed two brand new skills, an uneven bars dismount that was named "Mustafina" after her, and a difficult vault that was left without a name under weird and slightly complicated circumstances.

Aliya was quickly heralded as the new face and leader of Russian gymnastics, but it was not only her talent that had people talking. Gymnastics world had been empty without the ever-controversial Russian legend Svetlana Khorkina, and Aliya seemed to be the perfect person to fill that void. The commentators and bloggers alike embraced her strong persona and she was quickly named the new Russian Gymnastics Diva. She was talented, beautiful, and according to Aleksandrov, difficult to deal with. And she had that look. Perfectly poised at all times from her glittery ponytail to the fingertips that matched her leotards. Low on smiles, high on ambition, all steely in appearance and concentrated on nothing but competing, or better yet, winning.

She is just phenomenal. She is talented, she’s graceful, she’s dynamic… She walks out on the floor, and she looks like, ‘I’ve already won this thing.' --Tim Daggett on Aliya

Her eyes can suddenly turn from prey to huntress, throwing off her opponents, judges and anyone not fast enough to look away. -- Italian journalist describing Aliya

Was it a 3 tenth or 1 tenth balance check? Oh, let’s just say 1. It was really very pretty. --The Couch Gymnast on Aliya’s ability to fool the judges by making even her mistakes look graceful 

Her interviews gave the same appearance. She was ambitious for sure, but her natural shyness and honesty were easily confused with snobbishness and over-confidence.

Death. --Aliya Mustafina when asked what would be a reason not to go to the gym

Don't worry, I will win. --Aliya Mustafina to her coach before the competition

I have no idols and never have. --Aliya Mustafina

If I can’t surprise people with my performances again and fight for the win, why continue? I’m not the type of person who travels to competitions just to tread water. --Aliya Mustafina 

So she had only just burst onto the scene, but she had that something, that divided opinions and had people talking, in good and bad. She was controversial and fascinating and the fandom was suddenly divided into two camps, the mustahaters and mustapologists.

Aliya seemed to be poised to continue her dominance in 2011 with the same ambition and new even more difficult routines, but by this time, her ambition seemed to become her downfall. During the final rotation of the American Cup in 2011, Aliya was leading the competition ahead of the future all around World Champion Jordyn Wieber, and ready to take gold. Her coach asked her to play safe and perform an easier floor routine that would have been enough for the win, but she refused and insisted on a more difficult routine. She made a major mistake that cost her the gold. The same kind of decision on her part later that year almost cost her her career.

It was during the European Championships 2011, a year before the Olympics when Aliya had a bad landing on vault and tore her ACL. It was an amanar, a difficult vault that only few have and she didn't need it in that competition. She could have easily won with an easier and more safe vault. But she ended the competition with no medals, being carried away from the arena in tears and underwent surgery to fix her knee. There were new, talented up-and-coming Russian gymnasts ready to take her place and the public was left wondering if she could ever return anywhere near the level she was, and if she was even needed anymore. The team administration seemed to share this view casting her aside as only 16, but already washed up and useless for the team. It was up to Aliya to prove herself and come back.

She spend the rest of the European Championships in the audience cheering for her teammates and afterwards had a surgery to fix her knee. The injury left both physical and mental scars, to this day, she hasn't performed the vault again, opting for an easier one with a less risky landing. Even though she couldn't properly train for months, not being able to use her knee had a surprising side-effect: much improved uneven bars. She was already great on bars before, but she upgraded her routine to 7.0 difficulty, the second most difficult in the world at the time. She begged her coach to take her to the World Championships that year, but he refused saying she was not ready. It wasn't until December that she could start training fully again.

Aliya made her international comeback at the 2012 European Championships a year after her injury, and looked nervous and frustrated with herself, nothing like the confident gymnasts who once told her father before the competition that she would not loose. She didn't make any event finals and instead chalked the bars for her teammates while they were up winning medals. The TV- commentators were basically writing obituaries for her career. In addition to her bad knee, she had had a major growth spurt during her absence and was seriously struggling on balance beam, previously a strong apparatus for her. And TV-commentators weren't the only ones not impressed with her comeback, the team head Valentina Rodionenko told press before the Olympics, that Aliya was way behind her teammates and the best she could hope was a bronze on bars.

But as I said, Aliya is a BAMF and proved everyone wrong. She competed at the 2012 London Olympic Games and was not only the best gymnast of her team, but the best gymnast of the competition with 4 medals, a team silver, all around and floor bronze, and uneven bars gold, a complete collection.

My, how things have changed for this young woman. 2010’s shoo-in, became queen of adversity. A gymnast who, in 2010, might have sniffed and frowned at a bronze medal, last night greeted it with the joy of a young woman who will never forget what she has been through to get it. We won’t either. -- The Couch Gymnast on Aliya Mustafina (x)

She had to perform all around 3 times during the competition, and qualified to 2 event finals, winning a medal in every final she competed in. While her teammates crumbled under the pressure, she performed better day after day, becoming the uneven bars Olympic Champion with a near-perfect routine and the crowd chanting her name. She was not only gritty (falling during AA and not gicing up, fighting her way back to a medal), but blessed by the GymGods: she won 3 tie-breaks at the Olympics. Yes, you do NOT want to tie with Aliya, the luck is on her side.

If she wasn't already notoriously famous in the gymnastics world, the Olympics solidified her role as gymnastics royalty, and a true Russian Diva. NBC ran fluffs of her alleged "diva behavior" and focused their commentary on that rather than her impressive gymnastics. The internet was filled with eye-makeup tutorials on how to create her look and her gameface, or Russian Gymnastics Bitchface was the best there was, everyone was scared of being on the receiving end of it. She was awarded with a luxury car and several awards in Russia as one of their most successful athletes. 

The aftermath of the Olympics wasn't all pretty though. The tensions in the Russian team were high and Aliya's coach, Aleksandr Aleksandrov, also the head coach of the team, was fired, accused of focusing too much on Aliya and having poor results at the Olympics (they got 0 medals in Beijing before Aleksandrov, but team silver and 5 individual medals, 3 bronzes, 1 silver and 1 gold in London with Aleksandrov, just for comparison...). He had fought with the team administration throughout his time as the head coach and the final falling out was very public and ugly, hard for the gymnasts, hard for everyone. After he was fired, he opted not to stay as Aliya's personal coach in Russia, but left to coach Brazil's national team. It was a difficult decision for both, Aliya described Aleksandrov as a second father to her. Aliya was allowed to have a month off after the Olympics, during which she did press appearances, interviews and had some time home with her family. Then it was back to the training camp and back to competition. 

Aliya and Aleksandrov

2013 was an extremely busy year for Aliya. Both the European Championships and the Universiade were in Russia and the team was expected to bring top results at the home competitions. This was obviously a very difficult feat during the post-Olympic year, when half of the team was trying to recover from old injuries and the Olympics and the other half was retired or new seniors not yet ready for big competitions, or seniors just shunned by the team administration because of petty politics. Russia had a very small reserve team and as their best gymnast, Aliya had to compete in every competition and bring home most of the team's medals. And she did. She was the European uneven bars and all around Champion. She was getting hydrated in the hospital because of a nasty flu leading up to the Universiade, but won team, all around and uneven bars gold just a few days after getting out of the hospital. 

The situation in the Russian team got even worse leading up to the World Championships as more injuries piled up and the team got smaller and smaller. Aliya was peaking for the third time that year and still carrying old injuries from the hard training leading up to the Olympics, but somehow managed to put in new upgrades on bars and floor. She was tired and in pain and it showed. She looked very bad in qualifications falling on vault and floor and continued to struggle on beam (she received a score of 11.666 in Euros earlier that year and also fell during the Olympics). She qualified last place to beam final and 5th to the all around final, and people were counting her off again. But she came back strong yet again and showed what a fighter she was. She won a medal in every final she qualified to, bronze in the all around and on the uneven bars (she missed a connection in her new routine), and she surprised everyone in the beam final by taking the gold. She had struggled on beam ever since her injury and growth spurt in 2011 and it was considered as her worst apparatus by far. But she hit her routine in the finals extremely well and her reputation in the gym world started to approach legendary. Not only was she capable of looking terrible one day and then delivering her best performances right on time and becoming the World Champion on her worst apparatus, but she now also had a World Championships medal on every apparatus, a rare feat for a gymnasts and proof of her all around capabilities. She had also gone from being publicly dismissed as irrelevant by her team leaders in 2012, to being the only one in the Russian women's team to win medals at the 2013 Worlds. 

Aliya began 2014 by winning her third consecutive Russian Championships all around gold and acted as the team leader for the Russian European Championships team. Her Olympic teammates were still out with injuries and she was the only experienced competitor in a team filled with young seniors. She had an ankle injury and competed only on bars and beam during qualification, but was needed on vault for the team final. She stuck her DTY cold, and hit great bars and beam routines, but limped off the podium in pain after every apparatus. Her young teammates had several falls and the Russians finished third. Aliya finished her competition with a silver on bars and bronze on beam and then flew to Germany to have an operation to fix her ankle. 

By the time 2014 World Championships came, the years of training and competing without a proper break were taking their toll on Aliya. Russia was seriously lacking in depth and and the new crop of gymnasts didn't have the required difficulty to compete with the best, so Aliya was again the team leader and their best hope for medals. For two years she had been responsible for bringing the best scores for the team in every competition, but she was still without a personal coach after Aleksandrov's unfortunate departure, and rehabbing her newly-fixed ankle and suffering from back pain since 2012. She had to downgrade her uneven bars routine and take out a tumbling pass on floor. She now had only 3 tumbling passes and most of her difficulty on floor was based on difficult and risky turns. Her beam routine was based on difficult connections and back-up connections, with a barely there acrobatic series. In addition to her other injuries, she had a cold and high fever and looked visibly unwell. She still performed all around 3 times, qualifications, team final and all around final. The Russian team took bronze, but Aliya looked tired. She qualified second to the all around final, but for the first time in her senior years was left without a medal after a fall on floor exercise, the last apparatus. Her downgraded routine on bars also wasn't enough for a medal. 

But she was a fighter showed up in the second day of the event finals with a new determination. She missed her acrobatic series on beam, a huge mistake, but continued her routine like nothing happened and got a very controversial bronze medal for the effort. And she had even more fight left in her for the floor final. She had only relatively easy 3 tumbling passes and fell during the all around, so she wasn't exactly considered a medal contender. But like in 2013 beam final, she surprised everyone with a strong routine. Falling on her double arabian during the all around didn't discourage her, and she actually made the pass more difficult by adding whips before it. She also hit her turns and ended the competition with another bronze medal, and another skill named after her, the triple Y-turn, now called Mustafina. Ever since her first World Championships, Aliya was known for her rather stoic appearance at every situation, but when she received her score on floor, she jumped up looking the happiest she's ever looked. Clearly, it was a victory after such a difficult competition.

Aliya was supposed compete at two World Cup events after the Worlds, but the back pain proved to be too much and she performed poorly during the first one and pulled out of the competition for the second one. It was the time for her 100th pilgrimage to the holy Russian gymnastics site, a hospital in Munich, Germany. She spent the rest of the year and the beginning of 2015 in physiotherapy, and was unable to compete at the Russian nationals and European Championships 2015. She made her comeback in European Games 2015, still with some downgraded routines, but was the best gymnasts of the meet with 3 gold medals (TF, AA, UB) and one silver (FX). She also finally had a personal coach again, Sergei Starkin.

The comeback was short-lived and she didn't compete for the rest of the year, missing World Championships 2015. There were a lot of rumors going on about whether or not she was done with gymnastics, and it looked like the coaches had no idea either. The team had different news with different injuries, competition status and training reports for the press every day, while Aliya herself was taking a break and spending some time away from gymnastics. She was both physically and mentally exhausted, and tired of her constant back pain that only went away when she wasn't training. She was also feeling unmotivated and had a new knee injury, a tear in her meniscus that required surgery. She flew to Glasgow to cheer for her team, and found some surprising motivation to return to training: the Russian team had several falls during the team final, and ended up in 4th place without a team medal. A disappointing result a year before the Olympics. According to her coach, she saw that the the team needed her, and was now determined to make the team for Rio.

Aliya had her knee operated on after worlds and consulted new doctors about her back, and was able to resume full training in February 2016. She missed the Russian nationals, but competed at the European Championships and the Russian team won gold for the first time since 2010. She also became the European Champion on the balance beam, and won bronze on the uneven bars. A month later she competed the all around for the first time in over a year at the Russian Cup, a Russian qualifier for the Olympics, and finished third after falling several times on her best apparatus, uneven bars. She withdrew out of the finals to rest herself and return back to Moscow for physiotherapy.

The final month of training wasn't exactly easy. The entire Russian team was on the brink of getting banned from the Olympics, but they kept training, and were already on the plain to Rio when they found out the good news: they could compete.

So that is the story of Aliya Mustafina, the Queen of Russian gymnastics. She wasn't born to be the Queen, she fought her way up, earned that title and has carried it with grace and dignity. 

-----

I'm terribly sorry for this post being a mess, it's not worthy of the Queen, but it is what is it. And nothing is truly worthy of her. I hope it's at least understandable, I feel like my English was getting worse the more I wrote. 

Have some kisses to make up for it, courtesy of the Queen.

[source]