don't call the Queen fat

Just a quick and short post about an old and rather hilarious incident between Queen Aliya and Lidia Ivanova...

Lidia Ivanova proudly wrote in her memoir that she once called the mighty Aliya Mustafina fat. And when the conversation in question wasn't going like she wanted it to (surprisingly), she proceeded to insult the Queen's sacred bitchface. How she's still alive after offending My Tsaritsa, I don't know.

This Bitch

But before talking about the incident in question, let's get to know Ivanova a bit better, because I'm guessing that she's not that familiar to the non-Russian gym fans. She's a former gymnast and an Olympic Champion from the 50s and 60s, a national team coach during the end of the Soviet era in late 80s and early 90s and a judge and famous gymnastics commentator. And more importantly in this context, she's a typical Russian unapologetic feisty old babushka. When she's not offending foreign gymnasts in her commentary, blaming Simone Biles for doping or giving extra points to Russian gymnasts when she's judging, she walking around the Round Lake giving the poor gymnasts "motivational talks". And she's proud of all of this. Proud enough to brag about it all in her memoir and interviews.

According to Ivanova, Aliya's former coach (from 2013-2014) Raisa Ganina once approached her about Aliya. Ganina was unhappy about Aliya's weight and asked Ivanova to talk her into losing some of it. This itself is pretty hilarious, because clearly Ganina was afraid of her own gymnast and decided to make her daily life with Aliya a lot easier by giving the dirty work to someone else. Not only is this hilarious, but tells a lot about the coach-gymnast relationship between Ganina and Aliya and why it probably didn't really work. Ivanova as an old know-it-all babushka wasn't the least bit afraid of being a victim of Aliya's death stare and approached her about the topic. Only Aliya wasn't one to get run over by an old lady. She apparently thought her weight was just fine, which prompted Ivanova to inform her like a bratty teenager that not only was she fat, but everybody though that she had a bitchy stare. I'm not sure how this conversation ended, but I'm guessing with a major bitchface from Aliya. But don't worry My Tsaritsa, we don't think you're fat and we love your face, the bitchier the better.

I love how Aliya refused to lose weight under pressure, she's a lot more confident than most young women would be under the same circumstances. And she was right.

I don't have Ivanova's book nor have I read it, so this information comes solely from Luba Baladzhaeva's Twitter. If someone has the book, please send me an excerpt, I really want to read it. However, I did read several interviews from Ivanova, and in this one she pretty much says that Aliya's performances in Rio were crap. Even on bars. She also says the often heard sentiments that Aliya's character is complex, she hardly even trains and only her father can really deal with her. Nevertheless, she hopes that Aliya can come back for Tokyo and end her career in a beautiful way. This would actually be a nice thing to say if she didn't insult her last performance just a bit earlier. Now it just comes across as catty, as in "I hope that she comes back because her last performance was dreadful and she really needs to redeem herself".

Now excuse me while I go watch the Rio uneven bars final to relive the moment, I need the feels.