Lilia Akhaimova gave an interview to the website PeopleTalk and talked about her gymnastics career.
Akhaimova tried to turn the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to her advantage:
“When we were first told about the postponement of the Olympics, I was terribly upset. I knew that anything could happen in a year, especially in such an injury-prone sport as artistic gymnastics. One bad landing can take an athlete out of competitions for months. Of course, I was worried. Our whole team went home, we were under the lockdown for two months, but I even managed to find advantages in it – I saw my parents, spent time with the family, stopped being sad, and set a goal for myself – to become better in a year.”
She was originally slated to compete at the Friendship and Solidarity competition in Japan last fall but had to withdraw because of a positive Covid test. Then, she didn’t make the team for the European Championships due to an injury. As a result, she had no international competitions between Worlds-2019 and the Olympics:
“The last time I competed internationally was two years ago, at the 2019 World Championships, so anticipation, emotions, jitters, all that was unavoidable. I usually stay nervous right until the moment when I go out on the competition floor and salute the judges. From that second, there’s just me and my routine.”
Russian athletes had to compete under the Russian Olympic Committee flag and listen to Tchaykovsky instead of their anthem. Akhaimova thinks it was a good replacement:
“When you stand on the medal podium and Tchaikovsky’s music plays, it’s powerful! The music tugs at your heart and you know right away what country it’s played for. Of course, it was not without hurt feelings – why we, clean athletes, have to compete without the flag or anthem? But it didn’t hamper our training. On the contrary, it united us even more. We knew that the whole country was behind us and we needed to fight.”
Her coach Vera Kiryashova was a judge at the Tokyo Olympics:
“My coach was a judge at the Olympic Games, she was not allowed to approach me but after the victory, she came down anyway, hugged me, and said, “Lilya, do you even understand what’s happened?” and when I said “no”, she responded, “Me neither!” She always tells me, “Do your thing confidently. You don’t need to invent anything.” The most important thing is to control the situation and carry out your routine mentally, without succumbing to external factors.”
Akhaimova has an unusual career for a Russian gymnast – she started training in the Far East and wasn’t on the national team’s radar until her late teens:
“My childhood started with gymnastics back in Vladivostok, but I can’t say that I was deprived of anything (I just didn’t feel it): I played outside, like everyone, ran on top of garages’ roofs,* jumped around… At the time, I did gymnastics but as a hobby, for fun, I didn’t think that it would become my calling. When I was at the kindergarten, I loved it when my parents came to take me during the nap time. I didn’t need to sleep like the other kids and went to a practice instead. Then, in school, we trained on Sundays. On Mondays after school, we would take the bus and go home enjoying the fact that we were like everyone else!”
“When you have a plan, weakness is unacceptable. You woke up and don’t want to go anywhere? Get up and go. It’s discipline and self-control that my parents taught me when I was a child. I think that I’ll sign up my [future] kid for sports as well – they discipline you and build character. Elite sports are, of course, very hard but if my kid will want to do it, I’ll give them such an opportunity. I only wanted to quit it all once in my life – when I didn’t make the national team. I had a long journey. While girls usually make the team at 12-15 years old, I only made it at 19 years old, it’s really late for artistic gymnastics. For a long time, I had been trying to prove that I was worthy of it, many times I made mistakes, fell, had injuries, had to overcome myself. Then, after each failure (I wasn’t even able to medal at the Russian Championships), I would have a breakdown, but my coaches, parents, and friends were by my side, they supported me and helped me. I have a very tight circle of close people and each of them affected my athletic career. I owe them a lot.
Akhaimova said training for the Olympics was both mentally and physically challenging:
“The most important thing for an athlete is persistence, dedication, desire to achieve something and an ability to set goals for yourself, both a big global goal and small ones, in steps. At the Olympic Games, it helped me to not forget what was the reason I was doing it, when it was even hard to get up from the bed because of pain. It’s hard to combine elite sports and regular life. The time I spend with family and friends is just some days out of a year. I mostly talk to them online or on the phone. And, honestly, I don’t have any energy left for anything on weekends, either. I might just lie down or, at most, go to the sauna or get a massage. I think social networks are important for athletes. People often message me, “Hi, I know that you’ll never respond to me, but I cheering for you!” And they wish me the best. It’s nice to get such messages.”
She has her own method for overcoming fears:
“Generally, if I’m afraid of something, I try to do it as soon as possible. I’ll get everyone rallied up and I’ll rush into the fight that very second. For example, I was afraid of doing a dismount off the bars. I would come to the practice, get warmed up with the speed of light, and run to do bars as my first event, although even my coach told me, “You need to do other elements first”. I would always reply, “No, I can’t stand it any longer.” I don’t like the anticipation of a fear, the anxiety, I want to start enjoying that I overcame it as soon as possible. There are many examples like that in my life. Overall, I don’t believe there are difficulties that are impossible to overcome. You can and need to go through everything that seems hard now. The universe just won’t send insurmountable obstacles your way. Everything you do has a purpose.”
While she doesn’t yet know what she will do once she retires (and when that will happen), she enjoys acting:
“I was once in the movie Champions together with Svetlana Khorkina and Aleksandr Karelin and it really got me hooked. I kept trying to be in the frame and the thing I liked the most was doing acting scenes and not gymnastics scenes. I liked acting and imagining myself as a different character. Whenever I watch movies about sports, I want to be on the other side of the screen and take part in them as an actress. I think I’d try taking part in filming again, but right now, rest and recovery are my priority. For now, it’s hard to make predictions for the future, but I want to set goals and achieve them, agree to offers, strive towards something, and get the most out of my time and opportunities. I don’t have specific goals for Paris yet.”
* In big cities, Russians usually live in apartment buildings that don’t have underground parking. However, parking on the street was not always a good idea – there used to be a lot of car theft, and harsh winters mean that car batteries get frozen overnight. In the 80s and 90s, when more and more people started getting private cars, rows of garages were built in residential neighborhoods. It used a very popular pastime among kids across the country to run across the roofs of such garages or jump from the roofs, especially in winter. It’s probably not as popular now as the garages are getting demolished and there’s also much more parental supervision nowadays.
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