Angelina Melnikova appeared on MatchTV (Russia’s biggest sports TV channel) and talked about how it feels being an Olympic champion:
“For me, an Olympic gold had always been something unreachable. I couldn’t imagine how it’s possible to become an Olympic champion, how you feel in such a status. And when you become [an Olympic champion], turns out that nothing has changed, nothing at all. There’s a sense of completeness, that I’ve accomplished everything. For any athlete, a gold Olympic medal is the highest award there can be”.
Melnikova fell on beam in the team final and said she was angry with herself about it:
“After the falls on beam, the girls and I thought that we lost everything, all our [score] advantage, but when we saw that we were still leading by 0.8, it motivated us. I rushed a bit on beam, perhaps, I wanted to do it really well. This often happens, I needed to be calmer. At that moment, I was angry with myself, I knew that one cannot do that.”
Melnikova was also upset by her performance in the uneven bars final:
“It’s a real pity about the bars final where I fell. I knew that had I done my routine, I could have been on the medal podium and I lost that chance. I touched the bar with my feet in the second element and everything went south from there. The fatigue played a role, it was the third day of competition for me. It’s hard to stay mentally on while constantly knowing you have to do the maximum.”
Melnikova had a hard time when training for the Olympics and struggled to motivate herself:
“By the end of 1.5 years at the locked-down training center, I started feeling apathetic, too lazy to do anything. I forced myself to go to practices, I’ve never felt anything like that. I’ve always been active and interested. But here I would lie down on the bed and I didn’t want to do anything, I lived from practice to practice. It was hard but when we came to Tokyo, I got inspired – the Olympic spirit, different people.”
Melnikova was also asked, once again, about her relationship with Simone Biles and what happened to Biles in Tokyo:
“Simone and I have a good relationship, she treats me really well. It feels nice that she supports me, cheers from the stands. When I raised my arm to do bars, I heard her voice, I need a couple of seconds to come to my senses. It was unusual and really nice. She’s generally a kind, open, and positive person. Yes, in essence, she wasn’t able to do anything in Tokyo. I understand her because I had the same problem when you get lost in the air. We call it the twisties. When you get lost in the air like that, it’s really dangerous because we do difficult and dangerous elements. I completely understand Simone’s decision [to withdraw], it was correct.”
On her Instagram, Melnikova wrote about how grateful she is to her coach for protecting her health:
“My second post. And it will be dedicated to being grateful. Grateful to my coaches. Everyone knows that my love for gymnastics is limitless. I just adore what I do and it doesn’t depend on whether I do it well or not. I fell in love with gymnastics thanks to my coaches Natalia Nikolayevna Ishkova, Nina Viktorovna Pravdina, and Sergey Valentinovich Denisevich. I would like to say special thanks to Sergey Valentinovich because this person showed me that you don’t have to go through hell, pain, and tears to become a champion, that you can become a champion by working the right way, steadily, and more professionally. He had led me on such path for 9 years. As far as I remember, people always talked about the fact that he protects me too much [in training], that it’s not right – everyone’s working while she’s resting. I’m sure that if not for his work, I would have left gymnastics a loooooong time ago. But he protected me, he worked with me properly, he knew me, my body, my character. And he just correctly distributed the work that helped me grow – slowly but surely. And he instilled this in me since I was a child. I’ve been walking this path for all these years and thanks to it, I stayed safe and sound after working for two Olympic quads in a row.”
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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