Russian national artistic gymnastics team stopped training a month ago after two people from the team tested positive for Covid-19. That was after most of the team relocated to Novogorsk where the rhythmic gymnastics team usually trains. At the moment, Round Lake serves as a quarantine center for athletes who arrived from abroad and gymnasts are trying to stay in shape by exercising in their apartments. Valentina Rodionenko expressed her wish for the gymnasts to come back training soon, but Oleg Matytsyn, the Russian Sports Minister, said it’s not happening. He hopes it will be possible to start centralized training for national-team-level athletes in June at the earliest (local gyms are likely to open even later).
In Russia, athletes often get special treatment when it can lead to medals at big competitions, but it seems that the Ministry of Sports is not willing to bend the general quarantine rules for national teams and does not want to follow the example of China where national team gymnasts were able to keep training throughout the quarantine. For Russian gymnasts, the big problem is that their training center, Round Lake, is right outside of Moscow which is currently the epicenter of the outbreak. Matytsyn said another issue is that athletes cannot train without getting medical clearance and such a clearance is currently impossible to obtain as the doctors are busy treating coronavirus patients:
“There are several issues with centralized training at the moment. The first one concerns directly the work of training centers. As soon as the general limitations are lifted, we can come back to this issue. The second one is about getting medical clearance. At the moment, almost all of the employees of FMBA [Federal Medical Biological Agency that is responsible for regular check-ups and medical clearances] are sent to help the [coronavirus] patients and to minimize the spread risks. And it will likely be very hard to organize medical check-ups in May and June. Without the clearance, without doing such check-ups, we basically cannot resume centralized training.”
“Regarding the question of centralized training of national teams: we definitely will not conduct training at the training centers of the Ministry of Sports in May. We’ll hope for June. You know, yesterday, we got information from the Olympic Committee that in almost all of the countries, there is no centralized training of national teams, except for a few countries. It’s China and two or three more countries where limited numbers of national team athletes are training at military bases.”
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