Valentina Rodionenko announced that all top Russian gymnasts will compete at the upcoming Russian Championships in Penza on March 10th-14th. In November, almost all the members of the national team skipped the Russian Championships due to the fear of getting infected with COVID-19. The plan was to have an internal competition at Round Lake in December to give the gymnasts competition experience, especially since Russia also withdrew from the 2020 Euros in Turkey. However, that internal competition was later canceled and the training camp ended a few days earlier than planned for undisclosed reasons.
Now, it seems, attending the nationals will be the only opportunity to get competition experience before the 2021 Euros for most of the national team gymnasts. So far, the World Cups in Baku, Cottbus, and Stuttgart have been canceled. The World Cup in Birmingham (March 27th) is still technically on but Rodionenko said it is likely to be canceled as well. The World Cup in Doha is still on (albeit without spectators) and Russia might send event specialists there but they will not send their top all-arounders. Thus, the European Championships in Basel on April 21st-25th and the World Cup in Tokyo on May 5th might be the only international competitions before the Olympics that top Russian gymnasts will be able to attend. Their last competition before the Olympics is supposed to be the Russian Cup on June 8th-12th in Novosibirsk.
Rodionenko told R-Sport:
“Everything’s going fine, as it’s supposed to, we’re preparing for the Russian Championships. The last training camp ended on January 31st, and already on February 7th, the men’s team is coming to another camp, while women have been at Round Lake without a break. No one is injured; everything’s fine so far, thank God. On March 8th, we’re going to Penza to the Russian Championships, all the strongest gymnasts will compete there.”
“But there’s one possibility – if the Birmingham World Cup won’t be canceled, then those who will participate there will not be able to go to the Russian Championships. Although we were told it seems that Birmingham withdrew but there hasn’t been any official documentation [about it] yet. But so far everyone’s planning to compete [at the Russian Championships].”
Rodionenko said that the pre-Olympic camp will also take place at Round Lake even though there were earlier plans to conduct it in Siberia or the Far East to be closer to Tokyo. Additionally, there were plans for several training camps in Japan and the team even tried one possible location back in 2019 but this is obviously not happening now due to the pandemic.
Rodionenko said:
“We’ll be preparing for the Olympics at Round Lake, this is for sure. Four weeks before leaving for the Olympic Games, we’ll start the training camp at Round Lake and it will not have breaks. We’ll go to the European Championships; after that, we’ll give athletes a week to spend at home, and then they’re coming to the training center. There, we’ll prepare for the Russian Cup which will be a part of the selection for the Games together with the Russian and European Championships. The first day of the competition for the gymnasts at the Olympics is July 24th, as planned. We’ll arrive there five days before that.”
