Khorkina: A miracle must happen for Mustafina to go to Tokyo

This week, Simone Biles was able to beat the record previously held by Svetlana Khorkina – 20 medals at World Championships in women’s artistic gymnastics. The team medal for the US women became Biles’s 21st medal. Last year, Biles also beat Khorkina’s record for all-around golds at Worlds by winning the title for the fourth time.

There’s one achievement that Khorkina gets two hold on for now – a Russian gymnast who won two Olympic golds on bars. She shares this achievement with Aliya Mustafina who was able to win gold both in London and in Rio. Khorkina was not able to win the third gold at her third Olympics in Athens, while Mustafina might still get her third gold as she is preparing for the Tokyo Olympics. Khorkina doubts this, though:

“She had no competitions this year, while the Olympic Games are around the corner. I think a miracle should happen in order for her to go to Tokyo.”

Of course, Mustafina competed three times this year: she won bronze in the all-around and on floor at the Russian Championships, finished 5th at the Stuttgart World Cup and then won gold at the Birmingham World Cup. She opted to skip the European Championships to rest after three competitions in a row and had to miss the rest of the season due to minor injuries.

Khorkina also said she hopes the Russian men and Artur Dalaloyan would be able to repeat the success of the Russian team of her time:

“I don’t want to make predictions, but it would be great if the results that Alexey Nemov and I showed would be repeated by the current talents, including Dalaloyan.”

In some ways, the Russian men has already surpassed that success, as Dalaloyan became the World all-around champion last year, while Alexey Nemov, despite being an Olympic all-around champion, has never won any all-around medals at Worlds.

And what is a better way to congratulate the team on their medals at Worlds than to use your own photo?

To congratulate the women’s team with their silver medal at Worlds, Khorkina posted a photo of herself with the tags “Queen of bars”, “Olympic champion”, “Gymnastics”, “Sports”, “Artistic gymnastics”, “Worlds2019”, and “Team” (find the ones that do not belong).

She wrote the following:

“Congratulations to our women’s national team on the silver medal in the team final at the World Championships! But you can’t make mistakes. You have to take all the mistakes into account when preparing for Tokyo 2020!”

The post congratulating the men’s team was a bit more celebratory, although it still included her own photo and tags like “Queen of bars”. The caption was:

“I congratulate everyone on our men’s victory in the team final at the World Championships!!!!!! Hurray! Hurray! Hurraaaaaaaaay!”

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