Open Training at Round Lake

The Russian team is preparing for nationals and the press was invited to Round Lake to watch a training session and we were gifted with lots of pictures. Vika wasn't there as suspected, but also missing were Maria Paseka and Ksenia Afanasyeva. Afan has been training on and off because of ankle issues, but I don't know about Masha's whereabouts. I think we would have heard if she was injured though.

Aliya is at Round Lake training all apparatuses, the pictures show her working on her spins and floor choreo. They are still teasing us about whether or not she'll compete at nationals so we won't know for sure until the competition starts. Valentina stated at an interview that the reason for this uncertainty is that she wants to compete all around and all around only. If she doesn't have all events ready, she won't compete at all, event if her bars and beam are good to go. But why?!? I'd like to think that they are honest about what's going on, but I have a feeling that she's not competing and they just keep throwing her name to the mix in hopes of some publicity for the event, because artistic gymnastics is so unpopular in Russia and she's the most famous of the gymnasts. That or Valentina is on crack, take your pick.

Another one injured is a new senior, Ekaterina Sokova. She's a charmer and her best events are beam and floor, so Russia could have really needed her this year. She spent a lot of last year struggling with injuries and didn't have time to recover properly before a new injury. She's at home recovering, which is a bad sign. It's going to take some time for her to come back, if she's ever going to. I hope she doesn't end up retiring early like Maria Bondareva.

I was disappointed because there were only a few pictures of my Princess Tut aka Seda and none of her training... I guess that means she's not considered a key player. There were a 100 pictures of Spiridoz and she's a World Champion and pretty and all, but I would have loved to see someone else too.

The pictures of juniors were actually a lot better. Some actual training going on and more gymnasts. And how pretty is Ksenia Klimenko?

A Day at Round Lake with Vika and Dasha

Team Russia's main sponsor, VTB, has published a little feature on Viktoria Komova and Daria Spiridonova and their lives at the team's home base of Round Lake. It's probably the first of many this year (time for Rio, baby) and I'm already loving it, because I take any insight into their lives that I can get. Even if it is just a few meaningless words and a bunch of pictures that look like stock photos out of a school book for health studies. Or maybe Ikea catalogue?

Click here for the article and pictures.

And click read more for my bad translations and unnecessary commentary.

The Official Russian National Team 2016 feat. The Japanese Visitors

The official national team for 2016 was announced and it didn't make much sense as usual. Actually, it did make much more sense than last year, which doesn't say much.

But we have another news. The Japanese women's team is training at Round Lake. The Russians often have training "vacations" with other teams, but rarely get visitors (the Bulgarian team visited last year). I'm pretty sure Valentina Rodionenko once said that they don't want to give away their super secret training tactics. I'm really hard trying not to be mean and say it, but I'm going to say it anyway: Maybe they could give their conditioning program to the Americans?

But I like this Japanese and Russians combo. If we go into math, two times positive makes positive: prettyxpretty=more pretty. And two times negative makes also positive: inconsistentxinconsistent=consistent. So according to my calculations, we will get good results from this training camp.

The complete list of gymnasts on the national team this year is after the jump.

Welcome home Team Russia!

So weirdly enough, it took me until today to realize that the Olympic year is upon us. I knew it from the moment that the clock struck 0:00, but I didn't really feel it. Until now. It was this image that made the the realization sink in:

The Russian gymnasts are back at their home base of Round Lake. It's their first camp of 2016, and the Olympics are coming, for real. For real. This honestly made me so excited. On a scale of 1-10, how stalkery would it be of me to travel to Round Lake and just stand in front of that gate with a mad smile on my face imagining the training going on behind it? Because I really feel like doing that.

Another thing that got me really excited? Aliya (who has been doing physio in Moscow and Penza) is back home too. It's on. 

She captioned this with 

"Год новый, а место все тоже✌🏻️ привет Второй дом, или первый! Скорее всего первый🙈"

It means something like "New year, but a place all too familiar. Hello second home, or perhaps the first. Likely the first."

Welcome home My Tsaritsa!