New Year is coming and it’s time to draw some conclusions.
In case you didn’t know, New Year is basically the biggest Russian holiday. Yep, New Year and not Christmas. During the Soviet years, religions and religious holidays were banned and New Year became the big holiday instead of Christmas since the party was able to present it as a completely secular holiday. There’s even a New Year tree (looks kinda like Christmas tree) and Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) puts presents under that tree. Russian Christmas, by the way, is celebrated on the 7th of January and only religious people really celebrate it (by going to church for the all-night-long service).
Gymnovosti is turning 8 months old and many great things happened in this short period! Here are some of the most memorable ones:
- In the very first month, the story about Russian NOC’s sexist tweet about Angelina Melnikova was picked up by Dvora Meyers of Deadspin, then by some other English-speaking news outlets and finally it circled back to Russia where practically every news outlet wrote about it. At the end, the Russian NOC deleted the tweet, issued an apology and said they fired the person who wrote it. Admittedly, while some of their tweets are still problematic, they became considerably less sexist since the incident.
- I appeared on Gymcastic and talked about Svetlana Khorkina for a whole hour!
- My Twitter account was mentioned in New York Times!
- I started posting translations of Russian and Soviet gymnastics memoirs that have never been translated to English before.
- Last night, the English version of Gymnovosti reached 100,000 visitors! Our audience keeps growing every month! Also, what’s the deal with Tuesday being the most popular day? Is something happening on Tuesday that I don’t know about?
Gymnovosti reached 100,000 visitors while I was sleeping! pic.twitter.com/k7kyKDV03H
— Luba Baladzhaeva (@cherity1313) December 28, 2017
Next year Gymnovosti will become even more awesome:
- I plan on traveling to competitions and covering them live, starting with the Russian Cup in June – our patrons on Patreon are helping to make this happen.
- There will be exclusive interviews with Russian-speaking gymnasts.
And there might be some additional surprises in the future, so stay tuned!
Thank you all so much for reading and supporting Gymnovosti!
You are the best!
Happy New Year!
С Новым Годом!
