SportExpress.ua talked to several gymnasts at the Ukraine International Cup about their experiences competing in Kiev.
Artem Dolgopyat said that he didn’t feel well and got exhausted by the event finals:
“I got a bit sick. On the first day, I did floor well, but on the second day, I didn’t have enough energy. I had to change the routine right along the way. It’s ok, I’ll be preparing for the next competitions – we have two World Cups in May – in Slovenia and Croatia”.
When asked whether he’d be able to compete with Kenzo Shirai for the first place at Worlds this year, Dolgopyat doubted that Kenzo Shirai is a real human person (don’t deny it, dear readers, you’ve been thinking the same thing):
“Shirai isn’t human, he’s a robot, he does a thousand repetitions and all that on a hard landing surface, without mats”.
Turns out that Meta Kunaver from Slovenia had to do some chores so that her parents would pay for her trip to Kiev. Normal, right? Except that her parents own a farm and the chores included painting a fence and driving a tractor. Liudmila Korolenko who coaches in the club where Kuvaner trains told that story to SportExpress:
“Meta isn’t made for gymnastics if we’re talking only about natural abilities. But you can’t what a hardworking and persistent girl she is. She works like a horse and she does it in all areas. She’s a straight-A student in school, she participates in competitions for all school subjects and when she’s riding a bus to practice, she never stops reading a book. She also had to do a whole list of chores so that her parents would pay for her and her coach to go to Kiev. When I saw this list… there was tending to animals on it (they have their own farm), to clean the fence with sandpaper and then to paint it and even [driving] a tractor. I’m asking her: “What, you know how to drive it?” “Yeah, why? It’s not like I’ll drive off the field”.
Chloe Gatlabayan from the Philippines really wanted to visit Ukraine, the land of Oleg Verniaiev and good bars workers:
“I don’t have a lot of experience competing in the international FIG competitions. But I like everything here. Also, it was interesting to me to visit the homeland of the Olympic champion Oleg Verniaiev. We were watching how he fought for gold in the all-around competition at the Rio Olympics. We also wanted to see for ourselves how Ukrainian gymnasts do bars because it’s one of your strongest apparatuses, and it’s the reverse for us, but we’re working on that. Russian coaches are helping us to perfect the technique. There’s a language barrier though, they don’t speak English very well, but we understand each other through the language of gymnastics and we also learned a few Russian words like “spasibo”.
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