Russian gymnasts were among the last national teams to keep training but they were sent home from the training camp at the beginning of April. Even though the Olympics have been postponed and there aren’t any competitions scheduled in the coming months, the coaches are afraid that a long break in training will be hard to overcome and can lead to potential injuries in the future. Valentina Rodionenko said the team should go back to Round Lake and be quarantined there, so that they would be able to train. She cited the example of the Chinese national team that kept training at the national center throughout the quarantine and expressed worry that it will be hard to keep up with those gymnasts that still have access to training facilities. Some other national teams (at least partially) kept training and some are gradually returning to the gyms now. For example, the Belgian WAG team has been allowed to resume training recently.
Rodionenko told TASS:
“We need to allow our leading athletes to continue training at their centers soon. I think that the situation has to change soon, even though all the training centers will stay closed for the rest of the people. What does it matter whether our champions will stay isolated at home or at the training center with a gym? In order to get them back to the training centers, we need will and FMBA [Federal Medical Biological Agency] should join and organize the process in a way for athletes to train safely. After all, our colleagues from many countries around the word are training now and the Chinese, the main rivals of the Russian gymnasts never stopped their training process, preparing for the big competitions at their closed training centers. But we, for some reason, are afraid to come back to Novogorsk ro Round Lake.”
“And then our athletes will once again have to win Olympic medals despite everything, as acts of heroism. And why? We’re saving their health now but closer to the Tokyo Games we’ll force them to apply unbelievable effort and get in shape in a very short time. Regarding artistic gymnasts specifically, they can’t stop training for a long time because they do extremely difficult elements. It’s a work of amazing precision. They’ve worked towards it for 10 years. You can’t stop the process and then get everything back in half a year. The width of the beam is only 10 centimeters, how can you allow the gymnasts to lose the feeling for the apparatus? The most difficult transitions on uneven bars and high bars are not possible without constant work on them in training. Losing the feeling for the apparatus can cause injuries and quite serious ones, but it’s very hard to get that feeling back fast. We don’t have that many gymnasts contending for Olympics medals so that we could risk it.”
At the moment, however, Round Lake is serving as a quarantine center for Russian athletes who were evacuated from abroad. The Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said that next week, the Ministry will be discussing plans for elite athletes to start training but did not commit to any specific date and said that quarantine limitations would have to be lifted first.
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