Gennady Sartynsky, the head coach of the Ukrainian MAG, talked to SportExpress.ua about the past season. He has quite high hopes for the Ukrainian MAG and believes that in 2020, Ukraine once again will be able to fight for team medals.
Q: Have you and Oleg Verniaiev considered withdrawing him from competitions in Switzerland or were his injuries not serious enough?
A: Oleg twisted his right ankle when stepping off the bus on his way to Chiasso. But by the start of the competition it seemed to get better. And, since we already came there, he needed to compete. But at the competition he wasn’t able to control his vault and injured the other foot. And the next competition in Zurich was practically in three days. We couldn’t find a replacement for him, Petya Pahniuk was also injured, so Oleg had to compete again. That’s the life of a gymnast, you can’t do it differently in our sport. You have to accept that sometimes there are bad periods, to overcome them and to move on.
Q: It’s the middle of December, all the competitions are over, what does this time mean to the gymnasts and the coaches of the Ukrainian team?
A: Everyone’s preparing to rest but they are all staying in shape, some are learning new elements.
Q: Do you and Oleg have any plans regarding new elements, especially on bars, where he loses in difficulty to Zou Jingyuan?
A: The Chinese gymnast is currently the best bars worker in the world, he has both high difficulty and very good execution. We have some new elements planned, not just on bars, but learning them requires time and good health. Before thinking about upgrading, Oleg has to recover. Right now a number of small injuries doesn’t allow him to train in full strength.
Q: Oleg admitted in an interview that when he went down off one bar, he was very scared because it was not a planned element and his whole life flashed before his eyes. What was happening to you at this moment?
A: The same. I thought that he was going to make a mistake and in that situation, even 0.1 could be critical. Generally, he knows this element but hasn’t been doing it for a while. And here he needed to go down. Ok, he went down, but he then needed to get back up again and it’s not so easy. Thank God he managed.
Q: What did you think about Verniaiev’s prospects for this season when he only started restoring his routines?
A: I knew that it was going to be very hard because he hasn’t been training for about 8 months. After such a break, it’s hard to prepare for the World Championships in 1.5 months. You have to work on conditioning, endurance,
Q: Before Worlds, you didn’t have high hopes for the all-around and before the AA final you even wanted to take Oleg off the list because of shoulder pain. When he was first after three event, did you think that a miracle could happen?
A: No. Oleg did rings, vault, bars and “died”. When he approached high bar, I saw that physically he wouldn’t be able to do it well.
Q: Now, Oleg is talking openly that he didn’t have enough motivation after the Olympics and the break he took because of the surgeries and the recovery helped him to get back into the mood he had before Rio. Surely, you saw what was happening to him. Have you tried doing something?
A: No, time is the best medicine here. Of course, when Oleg came home as an Olympic champion, he was met with fame and appreciation. But in order to achieve results, you have to work, and you kind of don’t want to work because it seems you’ve achieved everything already. Plus, the mental exhaustion affected him. This happens not only to Oleg. Many athletes take breaks after such successes, it’s just that some come back and some don’t.
Q: Unlike for Verniaiev, for Radivilov, the 2016 Olympics weren’t successful. Was the opposite effect in place here, did he start working even more eagerly after Rio?
A: Generally, yes. Igor works a lot, he tries hard. But, as you can see, not everything depends on just our effort. At the European Championships, he got a silver but he wasn’t able to win a medal at Worlds. In gymnastics, if you make a tiny mistake – good bye.
Q: For the second time in a row, Radivilov made the event final at Worlds which is already a major achievement. What does he lack that is needed in order to fight for the medals?
A: There’s a lot of competition on rings. Igor’s rivals have good execution and a slightly higher difficulty. In gymnastics, you get a bit of an advantage here and there and you get a result, same as with Oleg. If the Chinese
Q: Was what happened to Radivilov on vault in qualifications something extraordinary or was it due to the apparatus? Some athletes complained about the quality of the equipment.
A: Of course, it was extraordinary, Igor’s hands just slipped during the block. This happened to Oleg as well, at a competition in England. He landed flat during the warm-up and couldn’t get himself back together for about 10 minutes after that. In terms of the health damage, Igor only got scared, he could potentially get injured. And the Chinese company has nothing to do with it. The competition was just really fast and he wasn’t able to prepare the apparatus properly.
Q: Do I understand correctly that if not for that fall, the team would make the final in Doha?
A: It wasn’t just Radivilov’s fall. On floor, Oleg made a mistake and Vladislav Hryko fell. If not that, I think we could’ve been sixth.
Q: When talking about the goals for Worlds, you said it was necessary to look at other teams in order to prepare for the next year and to qualify to the Tokyo Olympics. What did you think about the competition and what are our prospects?
A: If Pakhniuk and Verniaiev recover, in addition to the fact that we have good younger gymnasts, I think we can even fight for the top-3 at the Tokyo Olympics. If everyone is healthy, we should have no problem qualifying to the Olympics next year.
Q: What will be the team’s strategy for the next season – to work the weak events like high bar or to upgrade the strong events ever more?
A: On the team, we need to upgrade on all events and not just on our weak ones – high bar and floor.
Q: Our junior gymnasts had some success this past year – Illia Kovtun became the European Champion on bars and Nazar Chepurnyi won gold and silver at the Youth Olympic Games. Can these guys be compared to Verniaiev and Radivilov?
A: It’s too early to draw comparisons like that. They don’t have outstanding events like Oleg and Igor. Kovtun works well on bars but in order to become competitive on the senior level, he needs to add two elements and to upgrade the whole routine. He’s also a relatively tall guy, so, generally, there’s a lot of work to be done there. But there are good prospects, same as with Chepurnyi who will be age-eligible for the Tokyo Olympics. He didn’t show everything he could do in Buenos Aires, I’d even give C+to his performance. He was prepared well here but at the competition, something went wrong. In my opinion, it was just psychological.
Q: What was the most memorable about the past year and how did it go for the Ukrainian team?
A: The second year of the Olympic quad is considered transitional – not just in Ukraine but everywhere. People are trying things, there are no clear leaders. I think, in 2019, the difficulty will keep rising, there can even be some new names. Regarding the Ukrainian team, I think that we did ok at the major competitions of the season. Verniaiev didn’t compete at the European Championships but Radivilov won a medal. Igor didn’t do well in Doha, but Oleg won silver. The team also competed well considering that both Verniaiev and Pakhniuk were injured.
Q: What New Year traditions you have in your big gymnastics family?
A: The main tradition is to rest well. Soon the gymnasts will go home and we’ll start training on January 4th, but some people will be back only after Christmas [Orthodox Christmas is January 7th).
Q: Is it hard to get back in shape after the holiday feasts?
A: It’s n
Q: What do you want to wish your gymnasts for the next year?
A: First of all, to qualify to Tokyo as a team. I’ll wish Igor Radivilov to qualify to Tokyo as well because he’ll be fighting for an individual spot at World Cups. This way, we hope to get five spots at the Olympics.
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