In a few days, the Russian team is flying to Tokyo. Angelina Melnikova who was the baby of the team in 2016 is now the captain. In June, she talked to a local TV channel in her hometown about preparing for the second Olympics and the differences between 2016 and 2021.
Q: What are you feeling about the upcoming Games?
A: I’m in a really mood about these Games. First of all, I’ve been waiting for them for a really long time. First, I was waiting for half a year and it turned into a year and a half. I’m really glad I’ve endured this year and a half. And now we’re leaving for the Games in 25 days. I’m in a really good mood, I’m really ready to compete.
Q: After the last Olympics, you were quite critical about your performance. Did anything change since then, did you work on your mistakes?
A: Of course, it’s been five years since Rio, I changed as a person and almost all my routines changed, so it’s hard to compare. The only thing I can say is that my approach to training changed completely, both the mental and the physical approaches. Now I’m approaching these Games as an adult person, conscious of everything, a completely different person. I was 16 years old then, I was a child, and now I’ll be 21, it’s a big leap in age, so I’m a completely different person.
Q: Are you more confident now than back then?
A: Of course I’m more confident now, maybe twice as confident. Because back then I’d been to only one senior competition – European Championships – and now I have seven or eight various championships behind me. So, of course, I’m several times more confident now.
Q: Do you expect to win a gold medal?
A: It’s hard to say something like that because for me, it’s silly to make predictions in the sport. Anything can happen in a competition. You can win or you can lose at the most unexpected moment when you thought you were winning. So, I’m going there expecting to do my routines the way I want them to do which is perfectly. And I’ll be striving for that before everything else. And then we’ll see how things go.
Q: If you look at the level of competition back then in Rio and now in Tokyo – are there any differences?
A: I can’t talk about the level of competition now because we had a long time without competitions. We had no competitions and haven’t seen other competitors at all. Usually, there are World Championships, Asian Games and so on and we watch it all online and compete but everything has been canceled and the last results were in 2019, it’s ridiculous. A year and a half passed, so we are going into the complete unknown and barely know whether other competitors became stronger or weaker. We don’t know.
Q: Are you training especially hard now or, perhaps, resting more?
A: Right now, we are training more, a lot more than ever before, because we want to prepare our maximum.
Q: How many hours a day do you train?
A: In terms of the hours, the practices are the same – about 6.5 – 7 hours a day. But they are more intense and there are more routine repetitions.
Q: Did you have to give something up for the Olympics?
A: I guess the most difficult thing right now is that we’re under a lockdown at the training center, without leaving it at all, and we’ve spent a year locked down at the training center, we were not allowed to leave [on weekends]. This is very hard because you are completely left out of the community, you’re not in touch with anyone except for the people who you see all the time here. It’s really hard. I mean, even when the camp ends, you leave the center and realize that everyone are living their lives but you’re going back to the forest and spend months here. It’s very hard. Truly, the girls and I are barely holding on, apathy and monotony set in. It’s really hard to endure and you’re like motivating yourself by saying “only a little bit left to get through”. So, we’re all here enduring it thanks to mutual support.
Q: Have you gotten a COVID-19 vaccine?
A: Yes. The rules at the Games are quite strict. If one person from a team tests positive, and the team has, let’s say, forty people, the whole team will be sent home. So, I don’t really want to let the whole team down. Because of that, for the Olympics Games, yes, I’ve gotten the vaccine.
Q: Do you have a lucky charm? Or some superstitions?
A: I never pay attention to any superstitions. The only thing I have – I always take the same stuffed animal with me on all the trips. I don’t know whether it helps or not. In the last two years, I started taking the same teddy bear with me everywhere.
Q: Who’s your biggest fan?
A: My family are my biggest fans. I know that my parents always support me no matter what happens, so, I guess they are the biggest fans. And I immensely enjoy it when there are many fans at competitions, when they scream. Even now, at the competition [Russian Cup], when kids run to hug you… It pleases me so much to motivate kids to do gymnastics. Because I’ve been doing this sport my while life and I’m in love with it, so it’s great that kids are fans of it and are motivated by me.
Q: Do you visualise competitions? Do you visualise yourself compete at the Olympics, do the routines cleanly, and stand on the medal podium?
A: Yes, things like that happen. Before the competition, you’re always thinking about how you’re going to do the routines. You want to feel this sensation of a perfect routine. Of course, I think about routines sometimes but most often, I think not about my routines but about how I want to do them and what I need to do in order for everything to go exactly how I want it. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about gymnastics because such a big competition is coming up and I’m completely immersed in the sport.
Q: What do you think of when you’re competing?
A: Depending on how my warm-up went and how my body feels, I may start paying close attention to some issues I discovered during the warm up. Well, it’s a complicated system. Most often, you think about the element you’re doing right now in order to do it well.
Photo: Elena Mikhaylova, Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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