Lilia Akhaimova first made the national team at the age of 18 – quite late for Russian elites who normally get noticed when they are still juniors. She trains at the same gym as Elena Eremina and Tatiana Nabieva but only moved there at the age of 15, training in Vladivostok before, a city not exactly known for its strong gymnastics program.
Her powerful tumbling is her strongest asset but this season, Akhaimova improved significantly on both bars and beam and at the Russian Cup, became the second strongest all-arounder among the seniors. This earned her another spot on the Worlds team and a chance to compete in the all-around final. In addition, she made vault and floor finals. In the team competition, Akhaimova had a fall on beam but strong routines on both vault and floor. After the women’s team won silver and the men’s team won gold the next day, Akhaimova felt emotionally spent and this affected her further performances:
“I’m really happy that we won silver as a team because it was all of us, everyone contributed a lot of work and energy into it. I’m completely happy with how we did as a team. Regarding my performance in the final, I’m unhappy, of course, I could’ve done better. I need to work harder and I will. In the all-around, honestly, my emotions lets me down. We gave a lot in the team final, then we cheered really hard for the boys and all that affected me. I was ready physically but not enough ready emotionally.”
Akhaimova plans further upgrades on beam and bars and hopes to improve her execution:
“I need to add on beam and bars and also work on clean execution, which I really lack right now. This is my main goal because in difficulty, I’m only losing out on bars, the rest of my routines have good difficulty. I need to work more on execution.”
Akhaimova fully realizes that it will be hard to fight for the four team spots next year, when the promising Russian juniors turn senior but she plans to give it her all:
“I know that it will be hard but I’ll give my maximum effort. And I’ll tell myself honestly that I did everything I could.”
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