Aliya Mustafina gave an interview to MIR channel where she talked about her comeback:
“I decided to come back, I guess because it was really interesting to me to try to recover. I could do it after an injury and I was wondering whether I could do it after giving birth. I’ve been training for a month and it’s hard. But I thought it would be way harder. Or maybe I just want it so much that the work doesn’t seem too hard to me.”
“I’m on the national team and I very much hope that I’ll be able to return to my previous level, at least, the one I had before giving birth, and I’ll try to compete – at Euros, at Worlds. This year – 2017 – I’m definitely not competing anywhere in order not to rush my recovery, but starting next year, if everything goes well, I hope that my first competition will be the Russian Championships.”
“I think it’s realistic because I’ve only been training for a month and I’ve already seen what I could get back – I think I’ll be able to do it. Beam is going the best because it’s the easiest physically. It’s harder [to compete on beam] because it’s only 10 centimeters wide, but physically it’s much easier [than the other apparatuses] because the elements are not difficult compared to, say, floor. And so [beam skills] are easier to recover”.
Mustafina said that it’s not hard for her to train with younger gymnasts and she doesn’t feel very different from them despite being a veteran on the team:
“When we join the national team, you can say that we’re all the same age. We all need to do our routines, we need to compete, to train, to do our elements. And no one cares how old you are. The only thing I can say: yeah, perhaps, it’s easier for younger girls to do the elements, the routines, but we have experience and that’s no less important.”
