Friday, February 3, 2017

Melnikova's interview and other news

It's finally getting closer to the beginning of the new season and we're getting some more news and interviews. Komova is allowed to start training, her spinal fracture sorta healed, even though she's still in pain. Apparently, the pain won't go away, so she'll need to decide whether training through pain is worth it. Judging by the interview, her dad is so over it and wants her to forget about competing and start coaching, but that's not what Vika's planning.

Regionals are happening all over Russia, since the Nationals are in a month. Gymnasts on the national team (not reserves) are generally allowed to skip regionals, but they can participate if they want to - to try out new programs, get used to the competitions etc. The Volga region competition was held this week and Kapitonova won AA with 53.7, followed by Shelgunova (51.76) and Fedorova (51.63). The scores aren't very promising, but it's only beginning of February, it's B team, and Russians are generally a hot mess this time of the year. Although, Shelgunova normally pretends to be a gymnastics superhero at competitions like this and gets unbelievable scores. I guess, this year she decided to start being a hot mess slightly earlier in the season.

Angelina Melnikova gave a TV intervew at the beginning of January. Here's a summary.
She was absolutely terrified during the Olympics, especially in the team final, when she started the first on the first apparatus. When she starts the routine she's calming herself by the fact that it will soon be over, so she won't need to suffer and be scared for long.
Her day at the Round Lake goes like this: first training, breakfast, second training, rest, lunch, school (she's still in high school) and the last training of the day. Training takes 7-8 hours per day. Before competitions the main focus is on doing full routines and trying to commit them to muscle memory so that during the competitions they would be able to perform without thinking. In the off-season they mostly work on learning new elements.
Her favorite apparatus is beam. She likes understanding how the movements on beam work and why she makes mistakes and when she figures out how to do stuff correctly all the time, it makes her happy.
When she goes out to eat, she mostly orders salads. When she's at the Round Lake, she barely eats, but at home she gets bored and starts eating a lot. She tries to eat healthy, but doesn't always succeed, especially when she's on vacation. At the Round Lake she mostly eats porridge for breakfast. Lunch can very and they try to eat as little as possible for dinner. Angelina says she's generally not allowed to eat pastry and sweets, only on vacations.

My comment: Russians are big on eating hot porridge, called "kasha", for breakfast - dry cereals aren't very popular. Kasha can be made from different types of grains - buckweat, millet, oats, semolina, rice etc. There's a saying about someone who doesn't have a lot of energy or isn't very strong - "He didn't eat enough kasha". It's believed that to have enough energy for a whole day you should eat a bowl of kasha for breakfast. I've personally never even tried dry cereals before I moved to Israel and, after a brief period of fascination with them, I returned to eating kasha for breakfast.
Regarding not eating dinner, there's another saying in Russian: "Eat your breakfast yourself, share your lunch with a friend and give the dinner to your enemy". It's believed not to be healthy to eat a big dinner.

She doesn't have big goals like "make the Worlds team" or "win X competition", her goals are small like "compete X element without mistakes" or "to not fall during X routine". She's afraid that if she had a big goal and didn't achieve it her disappointment would prevent her from doing gymnastics after that.

1 comment:

  1. Such a hard working girl, she deserves a good vacation! And why Russia does not consider to train more on legs? That's the point what the code is about!!

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