Andrey Rodionenko: "I Would Call This the Year of Renewal"

On January 20, the Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation posted an interview with head coach Andrey Rodionenko which contains some interesting tidbits. For one thing, it appears that this year's Russian Nationals will feature a team competition despite the fact that neither the 2009 Europeans nor the 2009 Worlds will have a team component, all with an eye to preparing the Russian gymnasts for the Olympic team qualifying process, which will commence next year. We guess this means the Russians are taking the 2012 team competitions very seriously indeed. For another thing, Rodionenko says that all the juniors who are considered good prospects for the 2012 Olympics are now training with the seniors. It seems the Russians are already carrying out the plans Nicolae Forminte recently suggested for the Romanian women's team...


Andrey Rodionenko

Andrey Rodionenko: The Season of Renewal

The new gymnastics season has begun. Andrey Rodionenko, head coach of the Russian national team, tells us about what lies in store for Russian artistic gymnastics this year.

Q: Andrey Fedorovich, let us begin with what is bothering everybody both inside and outside sport – the economic crisis. Has it affected the gymnasts in any way?

A: The crisis has not touched us, but the only reason it has not touched us is because of our Federation. I'm sure you remember that at the recent conference, our President, Andrey Kostin, promised that gymnastics would not suffer. And he is keeping his word! A significant part of our funding is currently coming from the Federation. Even now we are carrying out a training camp with the Federation's money. Although state funding is provided, the money has not yet been transferred. But these are problems faced by all forms of sport, not just by artistic gymnastics. We believe that everything will be OK, thanks to the efforts of both the Ministry of Sport and the Federation. On that point, I will say this to avoid the next question: we will carry out the World Cup competition in Moscow, although there are problems.

Q: With regard to the global crisis, has the International Gymnastics Federation changed its conditions for carrying out World Cup competitions, which stipulate that the party that is running the competition must make all the necessary provisions?

A: I have no such information. This is a question for the FIG. At the moment we are proceeding on the premise that everything is as before.

Q: Then on to purely sports-related questions. The new Olympic cycle has started. What are the main competitions in this first post-Olympic year?

A: As far as the international level is concerned, we will only have individual competitions this year. The European Championships will take place in Milan in April and the World Championships will take place in London in October. However, the Russian Championships (to be held in Bryansk in the first week of March) will take place with the full program, as we call it – team final, individual all-around final and the various individual apparatus finals. Moreover, we will run the team final according to Olympic regulations, meaning three scores count.

Q: Why will the Russian Championships have a team competition if this year's international competitions only have individual competitions?

A: The thing is, this is the preparatory year for team competitions. The pre-Olympic selection will already begin next season. The fact is that the FIG has changed the selection rules for the Olympic Games. From now on, the first eight teams will be selected for the Olympics in the second season after the Games, and an additional selection will be made in the World Championships directly preceding the Games, where four more teams will join the eight teams which are already known. We must qualify for the Games in the first selection, so we consider this a preparatory season. And, now that we're starting our preparation for the Olympic competitions in London, we believe that the teams ought to train with this rule in mind from the very first.

Q: I see that there are many junior gymnasts training with the main team. Why are they training with the main national team and not with their own age group?

A: It's all for the same reasons. We selected the children who can "aim" for 2012, and included them in training with the main team. I would call this year the year of renewal. We have taken girls born between 1994 and 1996 and boys born between 1991 and 1992 for this training.

Q: Does this indicate that the men's team will fall into the famous "demographic hole" of the early 1990s?

A: I wouldn't say that. Happily, there are many fully functional veterans on the men's national team, and thanks to them, we should get over this "hole" relatively painlessly.

Q: Then on to personal issues. The most acute question - has Maxim Devyatovsky been selected for training (with the national team)?

A: He has been selected. He is trying very hard. In principle, I would not want to make a problem out of Devyatovsky. What happened with him is normal in a group which is adapting to each other. These are growing pains. Now he is proving his right to be on the national team just like anybody else.


Maxim Devyatovsky

Q: What about Anton Golotsutskov and Yulia Lozhechko?

A: Anton has started preparations for the all-around. We will give it a try. If God wills, it will work out. After all, he started off as an all-arounder. Then he concentrated on two apparatus. Now we want him to return to six apparatus. Yulia Lozhechko is currently preparing two apparatus: beam and floor exercise. Her challenge is to prepare routines with maximum difficulty on these two apparatus. If it then becomes possible for her to return to the all-around, we will only be glad. For now she is an essential member of the team for these apparatus.

Q: Are Sveta Klyukina and Dasha Yelizarova not taking part in the training camp?

A: They are recovering (from injuries). For now they are preparing by themselves. They will take part in the Russian Championships and then the question of their return to the national team will be resolved. The same applies to Anna Pavlova, Lena Zamolodchikova and Sasha Safoshkin.

Q: Andrei Fedorovich, this is the start of the second Olympic cycle for you as national head coach. What are the differences between the current start and the one three years ago?

A: This time we are starting straight away with the preparations. Then it was necessary to resolve an awful lot of organizational problems, which interfered with the work with the team.

More Voronin Cup Videos

New videos of the Voronin Cup (to go with the incredible Viktoria Komova video we posted earlier) have indeed been uploaded. YouTube user Igorgymn1 has tons of them. We thought we'd post a few to show you just how exciting Russian gymnastics currently is...

This is Viktoria Komova's excellent bar routine. Check out her form and swing - very promising stuff!

And this is Komova's floor routine, still with the amazing 1.5 twist through to Arabian opening pass and strange landings. Somebody please tell us - are Komova's ankles all right? She's not wearing any bandages around them, but we wonder about those landings.


Viktoria Komova (photo: Bernard Garau)
This is Anna Myzdrikova's very hard floor routine, featuring a great triple twist to immediate back tuck (that'll be useful under the new code); whip to immediate double Arabian; 2.5 twist to barani to stag leap; double tuck; double pike. Myzdrikova needs more dance, but she seems graceful enough. It should be a treat watching her floor routine come the next quad.

These are Myzdrikova's vaults, a sloppy but promising double-twisting Yurchenko and an arched but powerful half on, layout front off. Nice!

This is senior AA winner Kristina Goryunova's beam routine, featuring a nice pike front to sheep jump and one of the best front somis to scale we've seen. Now that's how you perform that skill.

And this is Goryunova's floor routine, featuring, among other things, a very nice double layout. Goryunova is an interesting gymnast. She's not naturally elegant (she moves a tad heavily), but she does an excellent job hiding that fact. She's living proof that non-elegant gymnasts can be taught to comport themselves gracefully, given the right coach and/or choreographer.


Kristina Goryunova (photo: Stefan Wurzer/Gymnasticsunited)
This is Alyona Zmeu's beam routine. Zmeu is very elegant and does some of the best leaps this side of China. She has gorgeous legs. Love this girl.

This is Diana Sapronova on beam. Sapronova is nothing special, but she's stable and elegant enough. It must be very reassuring for the Russians to have this kind of gymnast to fall back on when all their great stars are injured.

Also, for those of you who like watching gymnasts in plain clothes, here is a video of Yulia Lozhechko, Elena Zamolodchikova and Anna Pavlova standing around and giggling at the Voronin Cup. Pavlova is shown limping around with a huge brace around her right knee, over her pants. Reportedly she told someone who attended the competition that she expects to be back in 8 months' time. We don't know whether that means back in training or back in competition, but either way, it means she's optimistic about her return to the sport. Excellent news!

Russian News

A few days ago, IG published the results of the Mikhail Voronin Cup, the final top-level competition of the 2008 season. As you can see here, Kristina Goryunova won the senior women's title in Moscow, but it was precocious junior Viktoria Komova, fresh from a successful appearance at the Massilia Cup, who impressed most, outscoring Goryunova by 1.3.


Kristina Goryunova, senior AA winner (photo: Stefan Wurzer/Gymnasticsunited)

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, this is the beam routine Viktoria Komova performed at the Voronin Cup. Check it out - she's a very stylish gymnast (like her mother, 1986 Goodwill Games champion Vera Kolesnikova) with great form on her layout stepouts, an excellent standing Arabian, and a very difficult Patterson (double Arabian) dismount. Sadly the cool combination of flipflop, layout stepout and Arabian that she was practicing last year seems to have fallen by the wayside, but there's enough yumminess left.

Also, this is the floor routine Komova recently performed at the Massilia Cup. She has a very abrupt way of landing her tumbles (we're wondering if she's suffering from an ankle injury), but she's promising all right - check out that 1.5 twist through to double Arabian mount!


Viktoria Komova (photo: Stefan Wurzer/Gymnasticsunited)

Other Russian news

Firstly, the Russian Gymnastics Federation has announced that Oleg Ostapenko will assume the position of head coach of the Russian juniors at the national junior training center at Malakhovka on January 8th.

Secondly, MKRU confirms that the Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation is indeed investing heavily in its competitive program. Not content with bringing experienced coaches back from abroad, the Federation is trying to train its younger coaches by letting them take part in practical training sessions under the leadership of the best coaches at the Round Lake national training center. In addition, the Federation recently completely re-equipped 18 gymnastics schools with state-of-the-art apparatus. All this, it is said, with an eye not just to the future, but to the present. Sounds like the Russians mean business, doesn't it? We can't wait to see what will come of this all-out attempt to restore Russian gymnastics to its former glory.

More on the World Cup Final

The C Score is doing an excellent job of keeping track of who's in and who's out of the World Cup Final. Check her latest updates here and here .

Meanwhile, All Sport posted a few quotes by Russian head coach Andrei Rodionenko on his girls' participation in the upcoming event. (Elena Zamolodchikova is slated to do vault and floor, while Yulia Lozhechko will perform her beam routine.)


Yulia Lozhechko (photo: AFP/Getty Images)

"The World Cup Final will take place from December 12th to 14th in Madrid, and of course this competition is quite significant," said Andrei Rodionenko. "If we look at this in terms of levels, then the most prestigious competition in gymnastics is undoubtedly the Olympic Games, followed by the World Championships, but I would position the World Cup Final somewhere on the third level, on a level with the championships of the leading continents. The World Cup finalists on the various apparatus are determined by the results over two years, unlike, for example, the system in athletics [track & field], where only the last season is taken into account. The World Cup Final in Madrid offers those for whom it did not go well in the Olympic Games in Beijing or those who for whatever reason did not get to go there a chance to show what they can do. In any case that is how it is for our team. I'm glad that Yulia Lozhechko and Lena Zamolodchikova now have the chance to realize that potential, which for various reasons didn't work out at the Olympics in Beijing. And I feel sorry that Anna Pavlova and Ludmilla Grebenkova are unable to compete due to injuries."

What about Ksenia Semyonova, Mr. Rodionenko? Don't you think she deserved a mention too?

Anyhow, we hope that Rodionenko is right and that the World Cup Final will turn out to be like a "good continental championship" in terms of performance level. Good performances by the Russians would be a very nice bonus.