Elena Vaytshekhovskaya has published a great new interview with Aliya Mustafina on R-Sport. Here’s the English translation.
Tracksuit, hair undone, a complete absence of makeup on her face and immense fatigue in the eyes. Only here, at the Round Lake training center near Moscow, you can see the leading gymnasts of the country like that. The morning practice is behind, the evening practice is still ahead and, looking at my interviewee, I feel very acutely: the hour allocated for the interview was snatched from her few hours of rest.
“I’m just very tired” – Mustafina answers the question I didn’t ask and sits down beside me. I turn on the voice recorder.
Q: In women’s figure skating almost none of the Olympic champions can find the motivation to stay in the sport. You are preparing for the third Olympics already after you won at the previous two. How difficult is it?
A: I don’t have the motivation either. Everything that I’m doing now, I’m doing only for myself. I like training, I like feeling how my body gets back into shape. And then I just wanted to try it: would it be possible after such a long break, after giving birth. In other words, I wouldn’t call it motivation. It’s just a challenge for myself.
Q: I’m trying to remember: are there any active [female] gymnasts who have kids? Besides Oksana Chusovitina.
A: Not at the moment.*
Q: The national team coaches are saying they’ve never seen you work so furiously.
A: Actually, there are all sorts of days. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. At the beginning everything was unclear. I came to the gym, I didn’t have the muscles, the strength, I couldn’t even do the elements that kids can easily do. I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I understood that I just needed time in order to remember everything. On the other hand, I felt despair from time to time: what if I can’t.
Q: What was the hardest to get back?
A: The hardest was waiting. When you’ve already trained something, you need time in order to make the next step and reach one level above. Especially since I had to restore the muscles and it’s not a fast process. For example, I didn’t lose my balance on the beam but the muscle memory was almost completely gone. It took a few months to restore it: I started training in September and only be December I felt that I could try difficult elements. It’s all behind me now but I’m still not in a rush. In my age, you have to do everything smart, not fast.
Q: But is there some sort of a checkpoint?
A: Yes, of course. The main task is to be in shape by the beginning of the European Championships. That’s August.
Q: Do I understand correctly that we are talking about the all-around and not just individual events?
A: Yes. My first competition will be the Russian Championships, but there, firstly, I don’t plan on showing the maximum difficulty and, secondly, I don’t have a goal to make any teams. I just need to remember how to compete: how to warm up, how to perform, how to behave.
Q: Have you had a thought that you might not be able to make the national team?
A: Not at all. From the very beginning, I gave myself a very clear setting: everything that I’m doing, I’m doing for myself. And now I’m confident that everything will work out.
Q: Were you bothered by the opinions of others?
A: They haven’t been bothering me for a few years now. Before – yes, it happened, I paid attention. But then I realized that it doesn’t matter how people look at me and what they say about me. The important thing is for me to understand what I want.
Q: What do you want now? To get back to the level you once were at or to make a step forward?
A: Currently, the rules changed a lot in gymnastics. Before, for example, there was such a thing as special requirements – there were five and each got half a point. Now there are only four special requirements – the one that required a D dismount was removed. So, you can do any dismount you like and it will not lower the general score. It’s just that the rules have changed for everyone, not just for me. That is, I, for example, don’t really care which dismount to do, but for some who have a difficulty with D dismounts, it will be easier. If we’re talking about the difficulty of the routines in general, I’m not yet doing everything that I was able to do before. But I’d like to restore all the previous difficulty by August. The biggest obstacle for me, strangely enough, is bars.
Q: Your favorite apparatus?
A: Yes, It has to do with the fact that my bars routine requires ideal physical conditions. If I don’t have that, I start having trouble with endurance: difficult elements might look easy but they require a lot of strength. For example, right now I’m not doing inbars in my routine, I’m doing toe-ons instead.
Q: Let’s translate this sentence into the common language.
A: Inbar is when you don’t put your legs on the bar but put them further between your arms. It’s one of the hardest gymnastics skills. Accordingly, it demands more strength. If you gained a bit of weight or you’re just tired – you won’t be able to do it.
Q: Recently I saw a video of a very impressive routine by Elena Eremina with all sorts of releases. Could you give a professional assessment of that routine?
A: This routine is unique because it includes the hardest existing release and a number of difficult connections between the elements. Although in terms of the total difficulty it is less than what the Chines [Fan Yilin] does on bars.
Q: Do such examples evoke a sense of rivalry in you, a desire to repeat or to do something even harder?
A: Not at all. I very clearly understand that my primary goal is not to repeat something after someone or to beat someone at any cost but to restore my routines. And on that basis I can learn something more difficult, but, importantly, my own and not someone else’s. To get to the same D score – that’s another thing. Even if I just repeat the routine I did in the Olympic bars final in Rio, it won’t be less difficult than the Chinese routine.
Q: The eight-time Olympic champion Ole Einar Bjørndalen who wasn’t able to qualify for his seventh Olympics in Pyeongchang at age 44, once said in an interview that having a baby changed not just his personal life but the professional life as well. How did your life change after the birth of your daughter?
A: In everything. Although I can’t say that it became harder to train – my parents help me a lot. My mom agreed to leave her job and to devote all her time to Alisa while I’m at the training camp and this, of course, makes my life much easier. I don’t need to worry where my baby is, who is taking care of her. So, on the training days, I can afford not to be distracted by anything and focus on the work in the gym.
Q: When I talked to you the last time, you said that your mom and Alisa are always with you at Round Lake.
A: Right now my mom is always at home, In Moscow – that’s the most convenient for everyone.
Q: But doesn’t the fact that you can’t see your daughter every day cause you stress?
A: I treat this as a given: I’m training, earning money. In particular, [I’m doing it] for Alisa to have all the conditions to grow and develop and so that my family would have everything they need. On Wednesday, when I have one practice, I always come home. I also dedicate the weekends to my baby completely. In addition, gymnastics isn’t forever.**
Q: So, that means that your current job is just a means to earn money?
A: No. The achievement of the sports goals has always been in the first place for me and will always be. As soon as I fell that it’s not working out, I’ll retire without giving it a second thought.
Q: Are you measuring your life in the sport in years or in quads?
A: In quads, as before. Clearly, gymnastics is such a sport where anything can happen at any moment, but the point of reference is the Olympics. Everything starts there and everything ends there.
Q: I know that in gymnastics not everyone understands Oksana Chusovitina who went to seven Olympics and is preparing to compete in Tokyo at 40+. Do you understand her?
A: Now, when I have my own child, I definitely started understanding Oksana better than before. I think that a child makes a life of a female athlete easier. In the sense that it unties your hands if you can say so. You don’t have to think that by staying in the sport you won’t have time to fulfill your feminine destiny or that you won’t have time to get an education, and so you have the opportunity to devote yourself completely to what you’re doing. Especially if you’ve already won titles. You asked me how hard it was to return but psychologically it was very easy: I won the Olympics twice, I graduated from college, I gave birth and I was thinking not about how to win something by all means but rather I wanted to have a six-pack again.
Q: To what extent you now participate in preparing your own training plans?
A: To a very large one. The coach knows that I always feel my own abilities very well so he completely trusts me. And he knows that he doesn’t need to control me in terms of my discipline. So we discuss all my work together – there are no problems with it.
Q: Is it easier to prepare for your third Olympics than for the first one?
A: By a lot. Age generally plays a big role in our sport. Little girls usually need to be forced to work. When you get older, you start to understand your weaknesses and start thinking how to eliminate them. In other words, the older an athlete gets the easier it is for the coach to talk to her.
Q: Surely there are times when you don’t want to train and subconsciously wait for the coach to come and force you to work.
A: This is definitely not my case. When, inside, you don’t want to do anything, then it doesn’t matter whether you work or not, there won’t be any result. It’s the same as with food: if you’re not hungry, you won’t push food into yourself forcefully, right?
Q: Purely physically, did your perception of gymnastics change after giving birth?
A: Well, we’ll check it not – at the Russian Championships. It’s very good that I have an opportunity to compete in this competition knowing that nothing is required of me. It’s interesting for me from the psychological point of view as well: to see if my mind has changed.
Q: Are you afraid?
A: I am. I don’t quite know what to expect at the competition.
Q: Of the things that you managed to do in the seven and a half months of work, what makes you most happy?
A: Every day something makes me happy because I manage to do more and more. If we’re talking about serious achievements, then, I guess, the very inbar on bars. I’ve only done it separately, not in a routine, but I did it! And this is an indicator that my routine is almost restored, The hardest element is usually recovered the last. It really inspired me. It means that I wasn’t working in vain all this time.
Q: Do you often remember your own age?
A: I think I was the oldest on the team already two years ago, at the Rio Olympics. Now I even like it – I can serve as a benchmark for everyone else, to show that artistic gymnastics isn’t such a young sport. You just need to understand: when you just start gymnastics and everything comes without any effort is as normal as the fact that in a couple of years everything stops working. You just need to get through this moment and move forward.
Q: How do you feel being on the team?
A: Very comfortable. I always feel support – from other girls and from the coaches. To work in a strong team is like to go with the flow. Even if it gets really hard, the flow will always help. Even when you just go to the locker room and complain how hard and bad it is for you, there will always be someone who will take pity on you.
Q: Do the injuries continue bothering you?
A: Well, where would they go? I’m used to it already. As my mom says: if everything hurts it means you’re alive, you can keep working. It’s just that with age you start treating your own body differently. You know how to warm up, how to tape your legs, what ointment to rub on your back so that the muscles would warm up faster.
Q: Do you still have no desire to start coaching after retiring from the sport? Or did you change your opinion?
A: No. The maximum I’d agree on would be to give some sort of consulting assistance. Like Ksenia Afanasyeva’s helping now to work on the floor – she’s helping the main choreographer.
Q: Is it interesting for you to work with her?
A: Very. The advantage of such work is that Ksyusha looks at us with the eyes of a coach but at the same time she clearly understands the work as an athlete. It turns into such a multifaceted vision.
Q: Do you record your practices on video?
A: Quite rarely, but it happens sometimes.
Q: What do you feel when you look at yourself from the outside?
A: Honestly? Relief. I constantly feel like nothing’s working. And then I watch the video and it looks like everything’s not so bad.
Q: When was the last time you fought with your coach?
A: We don’t fight with Sergei Valeryevich [Starkin] at all. Of course, I can get angry at something, to grumble, but it’s not the coach’s fault if I can’t manage to do something.
*comment by Luba: There are currently at least two other competing gymnasts who gave birth: Aliya’s teammate Eleonora Afanasyeva and Turkey’s Goksu Ustas Sanli. I’m not sure how come Mustafina didn’t remember that there is another mom on her own team.
** I just wanted to make a comment that in Russian culture this situation isn’t out of the ordinary. Grandparents often take care of their grandkids while the parents work and sometimes parents only see the kids on weekends, especially in the summer when it’s common to send the kids to the countryside with their grandmas or other family members. This situation isn’t stigmatized by the society and isn’t considered to be in any way damaging for the kid or the parents.
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