So yesterday I’ve been to Krugloe
And boy it was an experience.
We were supposed to do interviews for a Russian media I am interning for and probably take a few pics… But apparently, neither ARod nor Grebs minded so they just let us see the whole practice.
Grebs is super chill (so are most of the coaches tbh) so when I introduced myself as Sasha he said “Zhenya” and shook my hand with a smile. There was a total of 12 girls warming up + Paseka who was already practicing vault and Eremina who came later.
For all those concerned for Iliankova: she was there with her back apparently hurting. She mainly practiced beam (semi-successfully) and I’ve only seen her practice Tweedle on the low bar.
Alexeeva had her knee heavily taped but looked decent overall (and spent most of the morning practice conditioning).
I had a very funny interaction with Akhaimova. She was taping her leg when I stood nearby and at some point, I’ve realized she was staring at me. I was like “Hey, Lilya! Love your FX” to which she replied with “Thanks” with this face like “Yeah whatever I’m wildly aware”. Later she came to me and asked if we were going to interview her. When I told her that we weren’t, she audibly said “Thank god” and immediately left. Love her.
Simakova was mainly doing vault and her Rudi looked amazing. Like, even better than it did before.
We did the first interview with Melka. She is actually really nice but is a huge introvert (more than I imagined she would be). My photographer said she is very smiley and soft when it comes to posing for pictures, but I got an impression it was “pls take this pic asap and leave me alone” kind of smile. I obviously can’t share most of the staff she said in an interview (yet), but a sneak-peek: she totally loves her full twisting DLO, Maroon 5, drawing and not being disturbed by anyone including her coaches during practices.
The second interview was with Vika (and now when she isn’t going to Euros we’re kind of stuck with what to do with the material lmao). She is way more talkative than you’d imagine. She shared a lot about how verification went for her - she fell on bars but nailed two of her beam routines there (#Vikathings). She really got a very new positive attitude and talked about all the struggle and her comeback with a smile (I really hope Euros disappointment doesn’t ruin that). She said that one of her biggest dreams would be getting her Amanar back and performing it at the big comp to get a redemption after London. We had to take a little break to take pictures and she talked to me as if she knew me. She was like, “Oh, have you heard about Denis Ten?” and then we chatted about how horrible that was.
My new favorite person of NT staff must be Ulyankina. We weren’t even planning to interview her but she straight-up approached me and was like “Let’s go, I’ve got time for you”. In between Paseka came to her to ask to leave early and Ulyankina made a few jokes and was super chill. She said coaching staff watches all the international comps because “We are old grandmas and don’t have anything else to do with our lives anyway”.
What really positively struck me was an atmosphere in the gym. Girls seem to be comfortable in terms of interactions with coaches and their training. ARod(!) was pretty friendly and encouraged us to talk to as many people as possible. And at the end, Grebs said that they were really excited to have us and would love us to come again.
I think I have a new-found love for this team.
dededos
germansingergirl
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
izzy806
snowghoul
