Lilia Akhaimova has never been in the spotlight much despite being on several medal-winning teams for Russia. That attention finally came to her now, both from the traditional media and on social media – she’s getting many interview requests and had a Tiktok video go viral and accumulate over a million views.
She talked to Fontanka about what she had to go through to get to the Olympics.
Q: You are probably tired from taking pictures for so long.
A: No, all these greetings and celebrations are really great. It’s hard to get tired from this. When we returned from World or European championships in the past, there were also people greeting us at airports but it wasn’t as grand. When we arrived in Moscow right after the Olympics, I was shocked by how many people came to greet us. It’s also the first time I see so many people in St Petersburg.
Q: How can you describe everything that happened to you at the Olympics?
A: It’s just something incredible. I’m feeling enormous happiness because I’ve been working towards that for 20 years. It was hard, there were many problems but thanks to my family and coaches I always overcame it and moved forward. I think I am now feeling the strongest emotions a person can feel. I don’t even know whether this feeling of internal happiness will be repeated ever again.
Q: Silver Olympic medalist Vasilisa Stepanova said that when she was training for the Olympics, she sometimes felt like she wouldn’t be able to survive because of the crazy training loads. How was it for you?
A: I also had such thoughts – whether I’d manage to endure it. I had to fight long and hard to make this Olympic team. We went through multiple verifications and for every verification, I needed to prepare like for a real competition. It’s very hard. Plus, I was plagued by injuries. Almost everything hurt. It’s really true. But you have you get up every day and go to practice which were almost non-stop. I was able to endure it and get to the Olympics only thanks to the support of my loved ons. It was also hard when we already came to Tokyo – we had to wait for the beginning of the competition for a week. Everything was already boiling inside, we wanted to start already. But it’s all behind me now. Only happiness and pride for my country remain.
Q: Did it all lead to tears sometimes?
A: Of course, there were tears, too, because of despair. For example, you have to compete at a verification but your back is stuck. You can’t even move because of the pain. But it’s a very-very important verification for you. And you don’t know where to find the strength to fight. Many thanks to the doctors who saved us in such moments. And, again, the support of the coaches and the family always helped.
Q: When did you know for sure that you made the coveted four-person team?
A: It’s hard to say. I was already on the team before we left for Tokyo but I had to defend my place among the four until the very beginning of the competetition.
Q: Does anything hurt now?
A: Yes, but I won’t say what.
Q: Your team was one of the first to move into the Olympic village, right?
A: When we came, there were already many people there. But, out of Russian athletes, I think, we were actually one of the first teams. It felt like a big family, like we were united – all the countries and sports were together.
Q: Was everything fine in the everyday life?
A: Yes. The girls from our team all lived together – six people in a three-bedroom apartment, two people per room. It’s not a five-star hotel but everything was well-organized. Food was diverse and tasty. There were dishes from different cuisines to try. The Japanese always have the highest level of organization.
Q: Surely you’re on some diet. Were you able to adhere to it in the situation where you couldn’t order special dishes?
A: There isn’t any specific diet. Each girl keeps track of her weight on her own. Overall, there was a large variety of dishes. And there were many foods we’re used to. So, in that sense, there weren’t any difficulties.
Q: Female figure skaters get weighed before every practice and might not be allowed to train even because of a few extra grams of weight. How is it in your sport?
A: We don’t have anything like that on the senior national team. Personal coaches generally watch [the nutrition] of younger girls because they’re going through puberty and it affects their weight. But I’ve never seen coaches being harsh about it. Coaches always try to explain calmly why it is needed and how to deal with it. I’m 24 years old, I’m way past puberty, so I watch my weight on my own.
Q: Were you most stressed during the team final?
A: As weird as it sounds, we were actually the most stressed during the warm-up right before the competition. But we have a united team, we always support each other. There wasn’t any sort of a crisis state. When you go out to compete, you tune everything out. There’s only you and your routines.
Q: Were you afraid [of competing against] the four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles?
A: No, we’ve encountered her at two World Championships already.
Q: There was a famous incident when our bobsledder Aleksandr Zubkov was happy when his main rivals from Canada had an accident. He was severely criticised for that afterwards. When Simone Biles didn’t do her vault successfully and withdrew after that, were you joyful inside? After all, it raised your chances [to win] significantly.
A: We took it fine. We saw her score and told to ourselves: we keep working and doing our job. It didn’t concern us in any way. Each of us had her own routines and it’s wrong to pay attention to such things. You should be focused on your own performance. Of course, we saw what happened but we agreed right away that we continue doing our jobs no matter what.
Q: But you surely knew that you became a bit closer to the gold.
A: We did. But the belief that we could win came to us after the qualification, when we saw the results. It also gave us a certain push and more energy.
Q: On the broadcast, you stood still before the final score was announced and when it was, you started jumping joyfully. What was happening in your mind in that moment?
A: It was a pleasant shock when you haven’t fully processed that you won but you’re really happy. It’s hard to describe with words. It’s just some limitless joy, happiness. This state continues during the medal ceremony. And only afterwards you start understanding what happened. And that is an even more interesting state.
Q: How was it to hear Tchaikovsky’s music instead of the anthem?
A: When I think of it now, I get goosebumps. When we were on the medal podium and heard this music, we were filled with pride. Anyway, everyone knows that this music was a stand-in for the anthem. So the attitude towards this music was the same.
Q: Was there a feeling of inadequacy because there wasn’t the real anthem and the flag?
A: Not at all. It was upsetting to some extent, of course, but it didn’t affect us at all. After all, we didn’t compete as neutral athletes like it happened at the last [Winter] Olympics. We competed under the flag of the [Russian] Olympic Committee which had the tricolor on it. And we knew that the whole country roots for us. We and everyone around us knew who we are and where we came from.
Q: There was also an interesting situation when Biles hugged and supported Melnikova after her mistake [in the final]. You’d think such emotional expressions don’t have a place in the heat of the battle.
A: It’s absolutely normal. We have good relationships with the girls from other teams from [when we met at] the World Championships and we support each other. We sometimes ride the same buses and talk about something we have in common. We message each other sometimes. Personally, I’ve never seen hate or dirty looks in women’s gymnastics. I guess it happened before, in Svetlana Khorkina’s times. People could set someone up, say something. But now everyone treats each other with great respect.
Q: How happy were you with your performance in the event final?
A: I’m happy that I did my vaults well. Of course, I would have loved to do them perfectly but I’m happy with what I did. My coach said that I lost to worthy opponents. Of course, it was far from perfect but it’s a sport.
Q: Your coach Vera Iosifovna Kiryashova was a judge at the Olympics and you couldn’t meet. Was it hard on you?
A: Vera Iosifovna is one of the most important people in my life. She was with me throughout my training for the Olympics. She led me and helped me in everything. Unfortunately, we indeed couldn’t see each other at the Olympics but we called and messaged each other. At the competitions, we winked at each other subtly. And even this support was very important for me.
Q: I read that you moved from Vladivostok to St Petersburg at 15 years old because you didn’t have proper training conditions there.
A: Yes, the conditions there were very bad. It’s wasn’t easy to train for high-level competitions. I was able to make it to higher levels only thanks to my parents who decided to move to St Petersburg. They wanted to give me a chance to grow in terms of the sport and academic studies. Not everyone would take this step. After all, they had to leave their parents in order to do that. I’m incredibly grateful to my mom and dad for deciding to do this. Now, as an Olympic champion, I would like to somehow have an impact on building sports schools in Vladivostok and St Petersburg. Because there are now also no proper artistic gymnastics schools in St Petersburg. That’s why we have few champions.
Q: I guess you might have seen it as your cruel fate – you moved to St Petersburg for better training conditions but in 2017, the gym in Pushkin where you trained was demolished, supposedly to build a new one. Nothing has been built since then.
A: Yes, it felt like that. It so happened that I never trained in great conditions [at home gyms]. Of course, the conditions in St Petersburg were still better than in Vladivostok – a new place was found for us that had the basic equipment. But compared to the national team’s training center and with how foreign athletes train in the regular gyms in their cities, it’s still a far cry from great training conditions. It would be nice if we could have such conditions outside Moscow as well.
Q: Your gym was moved to Expoforum. Was it really inconvenient?
A: It was hard to commute there, I had to spend almost two hours one way. But Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kiryashov, may he rest in peace, tried to create the most comfortable conditions for us. He always took gymnastics very seriously. I’ve never met anyone else who would love gymnastics as much and was as competent as him. He did everything for us. He created a decent gym from nothing so that we would be able to vie for places on the national team.
Q: Your coach said you are thinking about retirement because of the issues with your ankle. How is it going now?
A: Yes, I have injuries that need to heal, but I don’t yet have a definitive answer regarding my career. The Olympics have just ended and I need to think long and hard about everything. It will all depend on how my recovery will go.
Q: You won a gold medal, so, surely, you know inside that your main goal has been achieved and you can retire now?
A: I don’t have such a well-formed thought yet. I only have the thought that the 20 years I dedicated to gymnastics were not for nothing.
Q: Have you had moments when you wanted to throw it all away and quit?
A: There were many situations like that. But the hardest moment was in 2015, when I stopped getting invited to the national team camps. Before that, I tried to make the team for two years unsuccessfully. I kept crying and saying that was it, I would retire for sure. But thanks to the support of my coaches and family, I managed to find strength inside me and keep fighting. And the results came. Starting from 2016, I was purposefully training for the Olympics as a part of the national team. Now when I remember it and look at this gold Olympic medal, it all feels like some fairytale.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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What a great interview, thank you so much!