Gymnasts will return to Round Lake on May 24th

After a two-month break, Russian gymnasts will be finally allowed to resume training. According to Valentina Rodionenko, they are returning to Round Lake on May 24th but will have to take coronavirus tests before they are allowed back in the gym:

“At the moment, the training center is being prepared in order to adhere to Rospotrebnadzor’s requirements. We were told we will move in on May 24th, will take the coronavirus tests on May 25th and the results will be ready a day after. Only after that we will be allowed into the gym. We will have two floors to ourselves in the dormitory and will put each gymnast into their own room. There will be 50 gymnasts attending the camp.”

This number indicates that most of the national team gymnasts will attend. Considering that Russian regions are still under quarantine and gyms are closed, the federation is likely very eager to bring both seniors and promising juniors to allow them to keep training during the quarantine.

Both the national teams and the supporting staff will be isolated at the training center. The center’s staff will work on the drive-in drive-out basis where they will not be able to leave the center and go home for prolonged periods of time in order to keep the center as isolated as possible.

Rodionenko says the gymnasts are eager to come back:

“It’s not just simply taking one coronavirus test – they are saying that it’s necessary to do two tests now. There are many cases [of false positives] – let’s take what happened to us in Novogorsk as an example, where Sergei Naidin and Andrei Fyodorovich tested positive but the following tests did not confirm it. But everything’s fine now. At least, all our boys and girls are feeling well and are eager to train”.

Rodionenko expects that it will take about two months for the gymnasts to get back to their pre-quarantine shape:

“It’ll take a couple of months to get back to difficult routines. Even though it’s off-season now, people need to feel every element. Of course, we have time to prepare but we can’t relax. I think the European Championships will take place by the end of the year after all, and we’ll organize the Russian Cup before that. So, we can’t really expect to have no competitions. We have an established system – there will be mock competitions and verifications but you can’t replace [real] competitions with anything.”

Russian gymnasts will not be the first ones to go back to training – several national teams in other countries have resumed training as well. In the US, though, the situation varies from state to state and there are no centralized camps currently. Some elites like Mykayla Skinner and Jade Carey were able to keep training during the quarantine. Some, like Simone Biles, are only now returning to the gyms. Others are still unable to train due to the quarantine.

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