Holding competitions during the pandemic is a challenging experience for the organizers and the participants. Ukrainian senior and junior WAG teams that won team golds and a number of individual medals at the last could have potentially missed the competition altogether because one of the junior gymnasts tested positive for COVID-19 after their arrival to Turkey. Thankfully, the gymnast in question had two consecutive negative tests and both teams were allowed to participate in the competition. The story was told by Diana Varinska on her personal Instagram page. Varinska had COVID-19 only a few weeks before the competition and had to miss training because of it:
“The preparation for the European Championships started with me getting sick with the coronavirus. After two weeks of self-isolating at home, three weeks before the competition, I came back to the gym and started training. Considering how quickly I get out of shape and how long it takes me to get back, it was extremely hard and I haven’t managed to get back.”
“After arriving in Turkey, we were tested for COVID-19. As a result, one of the girls on the junior team tested positive. Because of that, we were all locked down in our rooms and were prohibited from going anywhere, threatened with the disqualification of both teams. If we exited the rooms, the [delegation] head would get a call from the reception with a question “why did the gymnast leave her room”, because we were being watched via cameras. By the end of the trip, someone’s eye started to twitch, right?” [referring here to the head of the Ukrainian delegation Oleksandra Hryhorovych]
“We spent 24 hours in our rooms waiting for the second test. Knowing that if our positive result were to be confirmed, our whole delegation would have been sent home. Fortunately, we all got negative results. We left the “lair” around 6 pm to train and started the podium training next day. The test turned out to be just a false positive. It was not enough for them to get a negative test, so the gymnast who was at her first big competition was held in her room for another day in order to get another negative result. Only after at, everyone went back to their goals and started working on them. So, these rules and a stressful trip were the final part of our year in the sport.”
During the men’s competition, the Azerbaijanian delegation had to withdraw after three gymnasts tested positive.
