For over two years, we’ve been wondering what is going on with Irina Alexeeva and whether she will ever represent Russia (or USA, or any country, really) internationally.
Russian-born Irina Alexeeva trains at WOGA and her first coach was Dina Kamalova (who also used to coach Aliya Mustafina). In 2016, she qualified junior elite and won gold at the U.S. Classic but could not compete at the P&G Championships because she did not have US citizenship. She spent the 2017 season recovering from an injury and debuted as senior elite in 2018 at the Buckeye National Qualifier with an AA score of 53.850. She then got exactly the same score at WOGA Classic winning bronze there and continued her medal haul with winning bronze at Gymnix with a score of 53.867.
Today, Valentina Rodionenko has announced that Alexeeva will compete in the upcoming Russian Championships (April 16-22):
“The Championships will be interesting, there will be a girl competing there who’s been training in USA, Irina Alexeeva. We’re allowed her to compete since she’s a Russian citizen. We’ll see if she’ll be useful for the national team, overall the girl is good. She’s coming back to Russia, she’s from our “school”, she’s Dina Kamalova’s pupil, used to train with Mustafina. It was six years ago. We’ll see”.
If selected for the national team, Alexeeva would be eligible to start competing internationally almost right away (as soon as she gets the FIG license), since she’s a Russian citizen and has never competed for another country.
With quite a few Russian seniors injured, Alexeeva can certainly be used on the team although the fact that her strongest event is bars isn’t helping her case much.
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