Valeriia Osipova won gold in the all-around at the Ukrainian Championships last week. A junior from Lviv Ilona Krupa won silver and two gymnasts tied for bronze – Yuliia Kasianenko and Marharyta Kozlovska. Osipova, Kasianenko, Kozlovska, Diana Savelieva and Yelyzaveta Hubareva are on the nominative roster for Worlds and all five took part in the Ukrainian Championships in Kyiv. The competition ended a day earlier due to Russian missile strikes on Kyiv.
Shortly before the competition, Osipova talked to Tribuna about coming back to Kyiv and being coached by her former teammate Angelina Radivilova:
A: I am training here, at the Olympic training center. The training process is going on smoothly, everything is as usual.
Q: How is your training with Angelina Radivilova going?
A: Everything’s fine, we get along with each other, we have a very good relationships, she understands me, supports me, helps me to get into the right mindset for competitions. When it gets difficult, she knows how to lighten the training load in order to avoid injuries.
Q: Does the small age difference between you play a role? [Osipova is 10 years younger than Radivilova]
A: No, it doesn’t, I respect her as a coach, she’s like a friend to me.
Q: How is your health right now?
A: I always have some health issues. Right now, there are some ankle issues, I can’t put full training load on my leg.
Q: How is the preparation for the World Championships going?
A: Everything’s going smoothly but the situation is that many promising girls on the national team retired due to physical or mental issues, due to the war, that’s why we need to build up the junior team. There’s kind of a drop [in team depth] right now but I hope that everything will be resolved soon.
The Ukrainian team’s training has been interrupted by the renewed strikes on Kyiv – on the last day of the competition, they spent eight hours in a bomb shelter, according to another Ukrainian gymnast Daniela Batrona. The day after, the gymnasts spent five hours in the shelter and had to deal with blackouts as the electricity infrastructure across Ukraine had been damaged by the strikes.
Per Ukraine’s team manager Oleksandra Hryhorovich, the interruptions in training will continue as the team starts their travel to the World Championships today. Ukrainians need visas to enter the UK and the UK Consulate in Kyiv is closed due to the war, so they will need to travel to Poland to get their visas. Since all air travel in Ukraine has been suspended, they will have to go to Warsaw by train with two train changes. They will spend the next 12 days in Poland before flying to Liverpool.
The World Championships start on October 26th. Ukrainian WAG team competes in the third subdivision of the qualification on October 30th.
