You Worry Me, My Tsaritsa

My last post was about Vika's struggle after London and now I'm going to write about my tsaritsa, Aliya. She's been worrying me all year long and it looks like she's going to keep worrying me next year too. The Russian team administration treats her as a lock for Rio (at least from the outside). She's constantly doing publicity and interviews talking about the event and her plans for training, but Rio is 8 months away and she isn't actually training, and hasn't been for awhile now. I feel like the Russian team is either refusing to acknowledge this fact, or they have acknowledged it but are keeping it firmly under wraps. For publicity, financial or moral support for the team, I don't know. But the situation bothers me.

This year was such a roller coaster with her. Pulling out of competitions late last year because of her back. Getting a new coach and starting training again. Not being ready for Nationals or Euros. Coming back spectacularly for European Games, things looking great for Worlds. Stopping training again during Worlds preparation, no one knowing what was going on. Her saying that her back was too much again, the Rodionenkos insisting that she was ready for Worlds, but just excused from Russian Cup. Then not going to Worlds preparation camp, but still named to the team. The new knee injury and surgery. We could get a Russian telenovela out of that.

But on with my thoughts about Aliya and 2016.

Vika My Princessa - I have had and still keep having so many feels for ya

A little something for Throwback Thursday. I'm about to start playing the new expansion pack for Sims 4, so you'll probably never see me again.
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In a recent interview Viktoria Komova described the last few years as the hardest of her life. An endless cycle of training, getting injured and not competing. She lost the passion to train and quit several times, fought with Gennady Yelfimov, her coach since childhood, and broke off the partnership returning home to Voronezh. Her return to training and Round Lake happened after the head of the Russian team, Andrei Rodionenko, called and told her to return right away. I don't know what they discussed or how he got her to agree (maybe it was first just because her team needed her, maybe there was something more to it), but she returned, started training and eventually made up with Yelfimov.

She returned to competition this year successfully (at least in my mind), performing AA in European Games at Baku and winning a World title on uneven bars after an otherwise inconsistent competition in Glasgow. If she stays healthy (yeah right...), she'll have her former difficulty back by Rio. She's shown she can fight, now all she needs is confidence in herself.

After seeing the interview, I remembered a piece I wrote about Vika last year. She was in the middle of the funk she discussed during the interview and I was pretty pessimistic about her chances of return to competition. And I just thought it would be interesting to see what I wrote back then now that we know how this year went. There's also a link to the post on RRG that I was referencing.

So, Svetlana Khorkina. Should I yell at her, yell with her, or just cry a little bit?

It was expected that Svetlana Khorkina would have something (controversial) to say about Russia's 4th place finish at the World Championships and she did not disappoint. You can read the original Russian interview (published by Sport Mail) here and a great English translation/summary by tumblr user papaliukin here. I recommend you read it, Khorkina is brutally honest which makes for an interesting interview. You can disagree with her on a lot, but she still makes you think.

The first part of the interview is Khorkina just saying aloud what everyone else is thinking: Russia didn't look ready at all, their routines still lack the difficulty needed to challenge USA in Rio and the time is running short. They can fight for the podium if they hit, but since hitting is a big problem for them, they have the work cut out for them. Sure. They also have amazing gymnasts, capable of being champions. She mentions Mustafina, Komova and Tutkhalyan in particular, but makes a point saying that they look like they're lacking the necessary motivation to reach that potential and actually become champions. 

But it's after the obvious is said when the interview really gets interesting and starts revealing more about Khorkina herself and the changing society and its effects on gymnastics than the Russian situation itself. For the most of the interview she expresses her frustration over gymnasts' work ethics and the increasing publicity over the team inner workings and then she compares them to herself and how things were done back then. While most of us seem to be happy that the gymnasts aren't isolated from the rest of the word anymore and have freedom to decide for themselves, she longs for the old days when the Round Lake camp and gold medals were the only things that mattered to gymnasts, and the coaching staff was there to make sure that everyone worked as hard as they could and more.