Andrei Rodionenko, the head coach of the Russian national artistic gymnastics team, has tested positive for COVID-19. Valentina Rodionenko said that after the national team gymnasts and staff were tested, two tests came back positive – for Andrei Rodionenko and one of the gymnasts. Later, it became known that the gymnast who tested positive is Sergei Naidin, a 2016 junior European champion on pommel horse. Andrei Rodionenko is 77 years old which puts him at risk for developing complications.
As Russia began unrolling quarantine measures, most training camps for elite athletes around the country were canceled and most national training centers were closed. Round Lake where the gymnasts train was closed at the end of last week. However, the national team decided not to cancel the ongoing training camp in which the men’s team and some of the women’s team members participate. Instead, they moved to the training center in Novogorsk where the national rhythmic gymnastics team trains. However, now the artistic gymnastics training camp has been canceled and so was the camp of the national synchronised swimming team.
Irina Viner, the head coach of the rhythmic gymnastics team, said that she managed to secure a permission for her gymnasts to keep training and expressed her unhappiness with the artistic gymnastics team:
“With God’s help I managed to prove and explain to the higher-ups at the Russian Ministry of Sports that we need to stay in Novogorsk. For the last three months, the girls have not traveled anywhere – not to the [Russian] regions, not abroad, they were constantly under the doctors’ supervision. I explained it and they met us in the middle, giving us the opportunity to stay and work in Novogorsk. But suddenly artistic gymnasts were also sent here, they went outside to practices at Round Lake twice, and synchronized swimmers were sent here as well. They started living here without any [coronavirus] tests.”
“On the second day, people from Federal Medical Biological Agency came, and they had a gathering without getting the results of the tests. The gathering was attended by the Minister of Sports, who explained how to behave and which documents to sign. And then the tests results came and it turned out that one 2001-born boy had a positive test and also the head coach of the artistic gymnastics team.”
“In that room, we were sitting aside, our kids do not have contact with anyone. The rest were sitting together, without masks, and I think it’s wrong, to put it mildly. Then we went to our building again, there are no people from the outside there. That’s also where our cooks live, no one goes outside. We were offered to leave, but I said I won’t sent my kids to this hellfire, they’ll be locked down and they’ll be training. What’s more important here is the quarantine and we’ll stay here until the quarantine is lifted.”
While Viner claims that rhythmic gymnasts had no contact with the artistic team, several artistic gymnasts posted selfied with Averina twins shortly after moving to Novogorsk.
