When Aleksandr Kartsev won all-around at the 2020 Russian Championships which were not attended by the strongest gymnasts, it didn’t seem to mean much. However, he won AA again at the 2021 Championships, with Belyavskiy and Dalaloyan present (albeit not in their best shape). He also won gold on high bar, silver on floor and pommel horse, and bronze on parallel bars. He has already been selected for the European Championships team and is a highly likely contender for the Olympic team, more likely so if Ivan Stretovich won’t be able to recover in time.
This year’s Russian AA winners both greatly benefited from the Olympic postponement. Viktoriia Listunova, born in 2005, was not eligible for the Olympics in 2020 but became eligible this year. Nineteen-year-old Kartsev turned senior last year but wasn’t on anyone’s radar for the Olympics last spring. He believes the extra year both gave him time to train and to mature mentally:
“I guess the pandemic was beneficial for me, since the Olympics were postponed and now I’m a candidate for the team. A year ago, honestly, I wasn’t training the way I am now – perhaps, I was still growing up, perhaps I wasn’t yet mentally ready for serious work. I think I’ve matured and my head is in the right place. Of course, there’s still a lot of work ahead but it’s a bit easier already. I’ve reconsidered a lot of things during the lockdown.”
However, Kartsev was also negatively affected by the pandemic. He had COVID-19 shortly before the 2020 Russian Championships:
“The Russian Championships in the fall where the national team leaders weren’t present gave me a push. I only spent a week preparing for the competition because I was sick with the coronavirus but I was able to perform in a way that wasn’t expected from me by anyone, including myself. It was just unreal for me. I was quarantined and was told that I needed to compete and in a week, I put some routines together from what I was able to do while relying on my old training. And it went well. Most likely, the quarantine had a positive influence on my mental state.”
Kartsev wasn’t really one of the stars of the Russian junior national team and his only major competition was the European Youth Olympic Festival. He is nervous about going to senior Euros:
“Of course, I’m nervous, this will be my first European Championships. I’ve only gone to the Youth Olympic Festival and I wasn’t nervous there even though I was 16. I’m nervous because it’s the Olympic year but I have to work more in order to overcome the nerves. In order to go out and do the routines with my eyes closed.”
Other gymnasts praised Kartsev for his work ethic, saying he’s one of the most hard-working gymnasts on the current team. He emphasizes that feeling well-prepared is very important to him:
“I don’t feel like I’m a Russian gymnastics star, I feel normal, I just do my job. I did quite a lot of good work at training camps with my personal coach Igor Kalabushkin. He helped me a lot, he went through everything with me and we got good results. In order for the results to be better, I need to work even more. I knew that I was well-prepared, I was just thinking about going out there and showing what I’ve done in training. Sometimes you’re not very ready but manage to shine at competitions but I’m not a fan of that. For me, it’s extremely important to prepare well. The key to my success is in high-quality training.”
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
