This week, Elena Eremina competed for the first time in more than a year. She had back surgery last winter and spent the year healing and recovering. At the moment, she is competing with very downgraded routines and is not likely to make the line ups for major international events for a few more months. She told TASS that her main goal was just to get back on the competition floor but she hopes to get her full difficulty back this year:
“I haven’t yet been able to recover completely. I showed minimum difficulty in the all-around at the Russian Championships just to get out there for the first time after a long break. I get a medical checkup every three months, everything’s going well for now and I hope it will continue this way in the future. I’m getting back in shape now and I think that I’ll be able to recover completely this year.”
Valentina Rodionenko said that the national team coaches just wanted to see Eremina in action and didn’t expect high difficulty, knowing that she’s not ready yet:
“We just wanted to see her with the downgraded routines. She did great but we didn’t expect her to surprise anyone here.”
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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