Welcome to the (second) Olympic year. Russia traditionally has a very long holiday period for New Year and Orthodox Christmas (on January 7th), so the Russian national team had a break before coming back to Round Lake yesterday for their first training camp of 2021.
Valentina Rodionenko told TASS that no one is skipping this camp:
“This afternoon, we are all arriving in Round Lake. Tomorrow morning, everyone is supposed to be tested for the coronavirus and we were promised to get results during the day. During the camp, everyone will stay in single rooms. The main team will have a camp until the 31st of January. Everyone’s supposed to come to the camp, there were no requests to come to Round Lake later or skip this camp. Nikita Nagornyy, Artur Dalaloyan, David Belyavskiy, Angelina Melnikova, Lilia Akhaimova – everyone’s supposed to come”.
Rodionenko said gymnasts will start preparing for the Russian Championships that are supposed to take place in Penza on March 8th-14th:
“Then we plan to compete at the World Cup in Stuttgart, although we’re not fully confident this competition will happen.”
Stuttgart, Birmingham, and Tokyo All-Around World Cups were postponed by a year due to the pandemic. They are supposed to be part of the Olympic qualification and so far, there were no news regarding potential cancellations. However, both Germany and United Kingdom are under lockdowns now. The new strain of COVID-19 is leading to a rapid spread of the infection in both countries and, at the moment, is out of control. The lockdown in UK can potentially last until the end of March putting the Birmingham AA World Cup (scheduled for March 27th) in jeopardy. In Germany, the lockdown is currently scheduled until the end of January but the effect of Christmas holidays is only starting to be felt and can potentially lead to extending the lockdown for much longer. The Stuttgart AA World Cup is currently schedule for March 20th-21th.
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