It seems like Valentina Rodionenko goes through phases with Aliya Mustafina: sometimes Aliya can do no wrong and sometime Aliya’s fat, lazy, and stubborn. One of the previous “bad Aliya” phases ended with Mustafina being sent away from Round Lake in the summer of 2015 and almost quitting gymnastics. Hopefully, the current phase of “let’s shame Mustafina about her weight to the national media and pressure her to compete before she’s ready and see how that works for her motivation” ends soon and the phase “Aliya is our only savior” will start again. Sorry, there’s no in-between when it comes to Rodionenko.
In the last episode of our favorite Russian show, Valentina Rodionenko commented to RIA Novosti on Mustafina’s knee injury and claimed that the only issue Mustafina has is the extra weight:
“We invited a professor for a consultation, he looked at her [Mustafina]. She has only one problem – extra weight. There were no changes in the knee, it’s a knee that had been operated on [in 2015], it’s all fine. But when the training starts, it, of course, starts hurting. There were no recurrences or changes in the joint, it’s all fine, we did the MRI, and another specialist from Japan has looked at it, he’s saying the same thing. It’s very hard for her to lose this weight right now, it’s the only problem. It’s all in her hands now. So, for now, there’s no point in going to Germany, they’ll say the same thing”.
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