Girls up!

You'll have a hard time trying to catch gymnast Tatyana Nabiyeva in her hometown of St. Petersburg — she's either at training camps outside of Moscow or at a competition somewhere. Our correspondent was able to catch up to the 2011 World Championships silver medalist on bars when Tatyana had been home for just a day.


— Tatyana, can you already feel the rush towards the Olympics?

Not yet, no-one is telling us yet that "the Olympics are jut around the corner…". It'll all probably change closer to New Year's and will feel the heat of the Olympics. The meets will start coming and then I'll be able to tell that the Games are approaching and we have to get serious about preparing.

— How many tickets to the Olympics did the Russian team get and do we know who is going?

The tickets don't have names on them yet. We only know that after worlds, six people will go. The fight for a place on the team will come in competitions next season.

— Are you happy with your performance in Tokyo?

Yes, totally. Our team competed well, although it could have done worse since there were a lot of new girls in the team. But they handled it.

— Did the women's national team lose many points because you were missing world and European champion and team leader Aliya Mustafina?

With Mustafina, we could have fought wit the Americans on all events and might have been able to beat them.

— Almost every gymnast has a favourite event. Why are you so good at bars?

I also have a vault and really, I can compete on all events. But bars really is better — the coaches in St. Petersburg work very well on bars.

— And why did our men compete worse than the girls?

Well, they did better than at world championships last year. Judge for yourself, they were sixth then as a team and now they are fourth. They could have been in the running for third, but they missed it; the judges weren't giving them high scores.

— Besides Anton Golotsutskov who got silver on vault, who else can fight for medals?

European champion on rings, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, has a routines that can get a medal. Sergey Khorokhordin and David Belyavskiy can fight for medals on pommel horse.

— How is the rising generation of gymnasts doing in Petersburg?


We have one really talented girl — Viktoriya Rezakova, who is 12 years old. She could eventually take my place and is also good on bars.

— How long do gymnasts last in sport?

Our girls are really young, some of them haven't even finished school yet, and the oldest, Kseniya Afanasyeva, is 20 years old. The guys are a bit older. Golotsutkov, who is the team captain, turned 26 in the summer. And I know a gymnast on the German team who is over 30, she's considered a long-timer in gymnastics.

— You are not in St. Petersburg every often. Why can't you train here more?

We just spend most of our time at Round Lake near Moscow and I'm already used to it there. All us girls were friends before that, and now we're like one big family.

— Don't you miss your real family?

Of course I do. I talk to my parents on Skype. We get to go home after training camps for 3 or 4 days, and after worlds we got two whole weeks. If you count since New Year's, I saw my family three times. That's a lot, sometimes it's less.

By Okasana Kiseleva for St. Petersburg Vedomosti.