As most gymnasts around the world, Israeli gymnasts are currently quarantined at home and trying to stay in shape with home workout. Alexander Shatilov frequently posts those workout on Instagram, with his son as a training partner or even a weight sometimes.
For Shatilov, Tokyo will be his fourth Olympics and, as he said to Oleg Verniaiev, training for another year at 34 years old is a challenge.
However, he’s glad that the Olympics have been postponed because with disrupted training, it would’ve been impossible to prepare in time for this summer:
“I think that if we were preparing for the 2020 Olympics in such conditions [during the quarantine], it would have been impossible to peak. So, postponing the Olympics by a year is a great decision for athletes. This way, it will be possible to prepare properly, to have a schedule for the year, to do training camps, and arrive there in peak shape. I am trying to stay fit by training at home.”
Artem Dolgopyat is a two-time silver World medalist but Tokyo will be the first Olympics for him – he was unable to qualify to Rio. After dealing with injuries the whole quad, he has finally gotten back to competing in the all-around last year and was looking better and better. The Israeli MAG national team was able to keep training for a while even after the start of the nation-wide quarantine but Dolgopyat had to do it without his coach – Sergei Vaisburg was quarantined at home for two weeks after going to Baku World Cup with Andrey Medvedev and Alexander Myakinin. However, now that the country is under the lockdown, Dolgopyat trains at home and even got a pommel horse in his living room. Before the lockdown, he said to the media he didn’t really expect the Olympics to be postponed:
“Despite the situation, I thought that the Olympics would have still taken place this year and not be postponed. I thought that it would have been very hard to postpone because of all sorts of reasons. I’m not saying that it’s not the right decision, just that the postponement is a very complicated process. This is the decision and we will plan the coming year according to it. We are continuing training as usual, in small groups, this did not change things much. It sucks that it’s moving to the next year, we have been preparing for it for a long time but there’s nothing to do. This is life and we’ll keep working hard.”
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