Andrei Rodionenko talked to Irina Stepantseva of MK.ru about the results of the European Championships.
A: My biggest impression [from Euros]? Epke Zonderland on high bar. His difficulty is 6.7. That’s gymnastics! It’s a pity he made a small mistake.
Q: Andrei Fyodorovich, the amazement at the Flying Dutchman is shared both by the experts and the public. And we completely agree here. But today I’d like to be closer to our gymnasts: both our teams were supposed to win and won but, as usual, with some nerves. Is everything all right?
A: Artistic gymnastics is a dynamic sport, everything changes fast and we put exact calculations in the first place. If the predictions are confirmed, then everything goes according to the plan. If not, then there are flaws.
Q: So, the predictions were confirmed?
A: The team competed according to the plan, each gymnast remembered that for them this was also a part of the selection for the World Championships. Everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to but sometimes there’s not enough time, sometimes – not enough health. There are a lot of “holes”, a lot of work and we lose to ourselves. Most often, the health lets them down. There are many reasons – the old injuries, the new ones. After such a competition you need to relax for a week. Remember the fight for the gold of the women’s team. They performed without falls, but at what cost? The girls then only fell asleep at 3 am. At the Olympics Games, for example, there’s a rest day after the team competition. It’s hard to compete for two days in a row.
And it’s not a coincidence that many of the gymnasts who competed well the day before looked tired during the event finals. Angelina Melnikova made two mistakes on floor. She later said: my legs were shaking already. The schedule of the competition was hard. Each competition like that requires not just physical costs but also licking your wounds afterwards. Some say: “ok, then, it’ll hurt a bit and then it’ll get better”? It won’t get better. The training loads today often exceed the capacity of the body during different periods of the year. At the training camp at Round Lake which starts this week after a short vacation, the first week will be for recovery. It’s a necessity. The most important thing is that both teams finished the championships without [new] injuries – you saw what was happening there, for example, on high bar for guys, falls after falls.
Q: The gymnastics Euros were moved from spring to the end of summer, only two months before the World Championships. It’s not what you’re used to but how crucial it was in the preparation for the main competition of the season?
A: They ruined the whole preparation plan! No competitions for half a year, then the Russian Cup, the European Championships, the World Championships and the juniors also have the Youth Olympic Games… The attempts of Europe to create their own Olympic Games has been an issue so far. The issue of introducing new competitions has been discussed more than once, all the coaches were gathered. All the specialists say: there’s such a large number of competitions now that the athletes can’t cope with the amount of training while preparing for these competitions. The continents, each level in the structure of the whole international gymnastics, everyone wants to show themselves, to get their own heroes. But as a result, it ends up being the same people [having to compete] during the same period of time. What can we do? To pick and choose and to participate only in one thing? Then people at those levels will say: why is that? At the same time, people don’t seem to remember that the main goal isn’t those competitions but Tokyo-2020. And you can’t keep riding the same people. After all, we need not only to keep them safe but for them also to improve and become wiser. But there’s less and less time for that. Because of the timing of the championships, all European gymnasts’ preparation plans are ruined. The governing bodies of all kinds of unions treat those issues incorrectly.
Q: But do you like the idea of the unified championships? The team spirit and so on…
A: We didn’t feel it at all. What was happening and why was it all together? What did it even mean -unified? Unified competition meant that there was a board in the hotel lobby and when we went out, we read: Russia won X medals, Great Britain won Y medals? They could count the medals without us being there. And so it means that for this board everything had to be moved and the competition that takes place in March or April had to be delayed until July-August while the Worlds are in two months. We have everything structured according to six-month periods. The coaches talked about this: you work for half a year, then go down, then start getting to the peak again, then recovery… But now you have to do two biggest competitions while at the same peak of the shape. That’s not going to happen whether we want it or not. It’s not justified methodologically at all.
Q: The championships are over, the results are on the screen. The results are the most pleasing, right?
A: You know, that’s a slippery slope, your definition of “pleased-not pleased” isn’t exactly correct. The medals don’t change anything and the path to them can be different. We need to figure out not what we got but what we lack for a victory on a higher level. The understanding of where we are at now, for what we have time and for what we don’t – that’s the most important. The Olympic team is now only four people, not five, and the results of the three count. It will be too late to change the team next year. The two new people – Dmitrii Lankin and Artur Dalaloyan – have never competed as a part of the team [at major competitions], have never been to the Olympics. These gymnasts made their debut at the individual Euros last year, Artur was second in the all-around and first on vault and Dima won silver on floor, but the teamwork is completely different.
Q: Qualifying to the Olympics already this year is the main goal for now…
A: And the main goal, considering the Worlds format, is that we need “trios” of athletes on each event. Not everywhere they’re good enough and I’m not even talking about the fourth gymnasts… In MAG, we are competing with Japan and China, they have two reserve benches while we don’t even have 1.5 for now. In China, there are 35 sports boarding schools. In the US, there’s a developed club system, up to 65 thousands gymnasts participate in competitions. In Japan, artistic gymnastics is a religion. You can’t do anything here, we’re going through our own development stages.
For each event, we’re selecting the third gymnasts not even for their result but we consider how to put all the necessary guys into the five-person team. The problem is that we can find three people for each event, but the team will end up having seven or eight people. But we can bring only five! It’s really hard. It will be hard for everyone.
Q: Do you think it’s right that such rules have been passed?
A: How can we think something about it? It’s the rules! Artistic gymnastics got cut down a long time ago. It used to be eight people on the team, then some sport was added, two people were removed and it became six people on the team. Then another sport appeared and where do you take spots from? Artistic gymnastics! And now it’s come to only four people on the team.
Q: Do you think this happens only because they need to save the number of the medals handed out?
A: Of course. There are no secrets here. And at the European Games, the proposal is to have three people on the team and two scores will count on each event. I also made a proposal: let’s make a two-person team and one score will count, why think small? And we’ll be like synchronized swimming. I really like when a solo swimmer performs but who exactly is she in sync with?
Q: And yet, going back to the results of the European Championships, can you praise both teams for their results?
A: We don’t have breaks: we finish one thing and have to come to our senses and move forward. Medals are always nice. But it’s all just the premise for the Olympics. After all, we won’t compete with just Europe there. It’s hard to imagine what American gymnastics looks now, there’s a revolution going on in the federation, but Japan and China are working hard and showing results. And the guys in Glasgow were closer to the needed result in the qualification. But in the final, it was harder to achieve because it’s the fight with the main competitor and things start: someone forgot something, someone turned in the wrong direction. They forget their pants, this happens sometimes.
But other than that, of course, the results of the European Championships will be the basis for the analysis for the formation of the Worlds team. And from there we’ll have our direction for the Olympic Games.
Photo: Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation
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