Two-time Olympic champion in gymnastics Aliya Mustafina, who plays for the Penza Region, rarely visits the Sursky Territory. Especially now, when training alternates with taking care of little Alice. There's no time for travel!

Nevertheless, the other day she nevertheless visited Penza. It was here, in the Burtasy Sports Palace, with a specially invited coach. After one of these classes, the Penzenskaya Pravda correspondent talked with the titled athlete.

About resuming a career

- After the Olympics in Rio, you took a break in your career. And now, training has resumed. How did you come to this decision?

- Everything happened spontaneously. Initially, I just decided to try to get in shape. I started going to the gym, then gradually began to perform simple elements, "folds". Every day there were more and more of them, so I got involved. I expected recovery to be much more difficult. Maybe everything seems easy to me now, until I got to the serious exercises that I did before.

- I heard from your coach Sergey Starkin that your first start could take place in the spring of 2018 at the Russian Championship?

- Purposefully we are not preparing for these competitions. Let's just say - if it works out, if I'm ready, then we will perform.

"Thank you mom"

- During the break, you got married, became a mother. Is it hard to combine hard training with education?

- My mother helps me a lot in this regard. Thanks to her, I have the opportunity to train while she sits with her daughter.

Does your husband help?

- He is always at the training camp, then at competitions ...

- Is it hard for two athletes to be at a distance all the time?

- Let's not talk about it... - Aliya asked and her eyes filled with sadness for a moment.

Social media is not the purpose of life

- On your Instagram, you don’t often pamper your followers with family photos and videos. Any superstitions, or just not "reach hands"?

- There is nothing supernatural, just, so to speak, posts in social networks are not the goal of my life. When something interesting comes up, I post it. But there is no such thing as specifically to shoot or photograph something.

- The wife of Denis Ablyazin (Ksenia Semenova) uploads a video of her son, where he, one might say, demonstrates a craving for gymnastics. Is your daughter doing something similar?

- It's too early to think about it, we are only 5 months old.

REFERENCE

Aliya Mustafina is two-time champion and a five-time Olympic medalist. She has two "gold", two "silver" and three "bronze" medals. In November 2016, she

She became one of the heroes of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In the face of fierce competition, the charming athlete won the second gold of the Games, and also helped the team get to the silver medals. The logical continuation of the life path for the 22-year-old pretty girl was the wedding and the maternity leave that followed. But Aliya was able to force herself to rest for only a year: two months after the birth of her daughter, she announced that she wanted to return to big sport. In the depths of my soul, of course, I want to believe that Mustafina will again reach the previous level and replenish her collection with a couple more Olympic medals, but, if you think sensibly, this idea is doomed to failure.

Drug for Champions

Everyone knows very well that big sport is a drug, especially if it was accompanied by big victories. That is why it is sometimes difficult to get involved with him. Until the champion himself tells himself to stop, does not force himself to stop, the sport will continue to pull towards him.

How can you not love her?! Mustafina won gold again!

On the first day of the competition on individual implements, Aliya Mustafina won gold medal on the bars. Apiary - the second in the vault.

It seemed that after the 2016 Olympics, Aliya could stop - it was felt like she was tired after a long and difficult four-year cycle. Every now and then, words about the “last performance” leaked out, that “it's time to relax,” but in the end, Mustafina took only a short pause and after a pause, bored, she decided to return.

“Why did I decide to return to the sport? Yes, because I miss - I miss you girls, the coaches who have worked with me for so many years, I miss my sports uniform (otherwise the press seemed to have dissolved, well, all the other muscles too), I miss performances. Of course, there is a huge desire to test your strength. After the injuries, it turned out to recover, and I wonder if it will work out after the birth of Alice. Hope so. Fighting mood, more than enough desire, enough for everyone. I realized that if I didn’t miss everything related to gymnastics so much, I wouldn’t even try, ”Mustafina wrote on her page on the social network.

Fighting mood, more than enough desire, enough for everyone. I realized that if I didn’t miss everything related to gymnastics so much, I wouldn’t even try.

Aliya is known for her punchy character, her perseverance, which allowed her to go all the way every time and eventually become a two-time Olympic champion. It will help the athlete this time, if the decision is final. Mustafina has already outlined her prospects - she wants to get to the 2020 Olympics. Just participation in competitions, of course, will not suit Aliya - she will try to re-engage in the race for medals. But can he?

Powers are not limitless

Aliya's sports path to two gold medals was not smooth and cloudless - on the contrary, it was as thorny and winding as possible. In 2010, young Mustafina blossomed at the European Championships, where she took two silvers and helped the team get the long-awaited gold. But the next continental championship turned into a real nightmare: Aliya failed her crown jump and got serious injury- knee ligament rupture. However, the athlete, with an incredible effort of will, managed to recover for the Olympics in London and even win!

The next four years turned out to be somewhat similar to the previous one. Aliya began to be pushed back from high places, and she kept her previous level only due to patience and an iron spirit. At some point, it seemed that even before the Games in Rio de Janeiro there was no point in delaying it - it was time to leave. But the arrival of coach Sergei Starkin changed a lot. Aliya, with his assistance, literally returned a few years ago, to those years when her programs were the most difficult in the world, and she herself fought for the most high places. This attitude, despite a new injury, surgery on the meniscus and again missed the World Cup, managed to be maintained until the Olympics. And in Brazil, Mustafina was again able to show high results and take home three medals. They just looked like an athlete's swan song. Alia was clearly doing her best. She is tired.

Mustafina's experiment. Restart career and cheat time

At the European Games in Baku, Russian Aliya Mustafina took the first step to regain the title of the strongest gymnast in the world.

During the year, the athlete, in whose life a lot has changed, of course, rested as it should. But does she have so much strength now to reach the Olympic Games in Tokyo, which will be held only three years later? Exactly one month later, Mustafina will turn 23, which means that during the 2020 Games she will be almost 26 - for women's gymnastics age is not critical, not already beyond. Is it possible to expect that an athlete will have enough stamina to maintain her strength until this milestone, especially when there are two Olympic gold, and the family in which the daughter grows up? As practice shows, the answer to this question is often negative.

I really hope that Aliya will be able to implement her plan to return, if she so desires. Mustafina, after all, restarted her career twice, recovering to Olympic Games. She did it successfully, but I can’t through it, spending an incredible amount of strength. The chance of doing it a third time is very small, even if the preparation goes according to plan. And if, God forbid, some kind of injury happens again? In any case, the likelihood of remaining in leading roles in world gymnastics by the age of 26 is extremely small. But is it worth the candle then? Maybe it’s better to stop in time and leave at the peak in order to devote yourself to your daughter and, for example, coaching?

The first reaction that I heard from a colleague sounded somewhat dismissive: “Well, she’s not serious, the child is only a couple of months old. What kind of return to big sport can there be?

RETURN TO PREVIOUS LEVEL

However, Aliya Mustafina, whom I phoned in a village near Nizhny Novgorod, said:

- Of course, I want to restore first of all sportswear, and sport is the most suitable activity for this. But my intentions are more than serious: I want not only to return to the sport, but to reach my previous level ...

What is the “previous level” is probably not necessary to explain: Mustafina won in the personal form all-around at two Olympics, and it is interesting that she was not considered a favorite in either Olympic season. Before the Games in London, the absolute world champion, who had survived the most severe injury and knee surgery since that victory, was almost written off to the “second tier”, giving the role of a favorite to a much younger girl, in the same way, the management was out of favor personal coach Mustafina and he is also the head coach of the women's team Alexander Alexandrov. The contract with the specialist was terminated immediately after those Games, and he went to work in Brazil. Accordingly, Aliya had to decide: either leave the sport altogether, or look for a new mentor.

The games in Rio turned out to be no less difficult for the athlete: Mustafina got used to working with another specialist (the male coach became the athlete’s mentor Sergei Starkin), in parallel and with varying success, she healed old injuries. And at the Games she made another feat: won gold, silver and bronze, along the way proving that the second athlete, who knows how to concentrate in such a difficult moment and give the maximum possible result, in Russian team no in principle. And in the world, perhaps, there are few of them. And who dares to say that returning to the sport after the birth of the first child is a more difficult task?

MUSTAFINA: “THE DAUGHTER WILL ALSO GO TO KRUGLOE”

- In our last interview, you said that you dreamed of going to winter Olympics to Pyeongchang to see with my own eyes how my husband performs,” I jokingly faked Alia.

“I haven’t said goodbye to this dream yet,” the interlocutor answered. - It’s just too early to talk about it now: my husband will be constantly at the training camp, and so will I. I plan to start training on the Round Lake on September 3rd.

“Wait, who will the child stay with?”

- He will also go to the Krugloye.

- They completely confused me: will you start training, and will you bring the stroller to the gym?

"No," Alia laughed. “Mom will come with me. She is a teacher by profession, and there is already an agreement that my mother will work on the base at the visiting school. After all, teachers constantly come to us - and now she will be among them. Most likely he will teach physics and mathematics.

“Still, I didn't think you'd want to stay in gymnastics.

- Why? I knew from the very beginning that I did not want to leave the sport. If there were any doubts about this, then a few years ago. In the Olympic season, I no longer doubted: as soon as the child appears, I will try to return to the gym as soon as possible.

- How does your dad feel about the prospect of parting for a long time not only with his eldest daughter and granddaughter, but also with his wife?

- Grumbles, of course. But in fact, he always supported me in all my plans. Now he is standing next to me - listening to our conversation and smiling.

- How long do you feel it will take you to restore physical condition?

- I don't think it will be long. Although in fact I don’t even know if I’m overweight now.

In what sense do you not know? Really so quickly managed to wean from the habit of weighing twice a day?

“And I don’t have scales in my village at all. I feel good, I fit into clothes, but I can’t estimate my own weight by eye. And I don't think about it, to be honest.

What does dad say about this? He, as a former wrestler, should have an eye for such things.

Dad says I'm beautiful. And that everything will be all right with me!

Two-time Olympic champion about preparing for the first World Cup after giving birth.

Three weeks later, on October 25, the World Artistic Gymnastics Championship starts in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Our main gymnast of the last eight years, Aliya Mustafina, has been announced for the Russian national team. For double Olympic champion this championship will be the first major international tournament after returning from maternity leave. Initially, they were supposed to be the European Championship in Glasgow, but a knee injury prevented. We talked with Aliya about injuries, and about returning, and about the peculiarities of motherhood in such a seemingly inappropriate sport as gymnastics.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BndqcmXlS6J/?taken-by=musaliya135

“Going on maternity leave is not so scary”

- You did not go to the European Championship because of your knee. Is it the left knee that had that terrible injury in Berlin in 2011?

- No, this is the right knee, but it was also operated on, only in 2015. Then I had a detachment of the posterior horn of the medial meniscus, and this year at the Russian Championships I again injured him a little.

- In the course of your career, you injured both knees, there were probably more problems. Are chronic injuries bothering you?

– Probably not, because I don’t remember two of my three operations at all, the consequences of them don’t bother me in any way. One knee, due to the circumstances of the injury, will periodically distract, but this is eliminated in two weeks.

Many gymnasts have back problems. How did she endure the third trimester of pregnancy?

- It is very interesting. Since 2012 I have been suffering from back pain. And the only period when she did not get sick was just pregnancy. I didn't think about her at all during those months.

Has pregnancy changed your body?

- Gymnastics is a sport where functional performance, endurance, strength do not play a big role. Technique and precision are important. In this regard, I do not feel any big changes.

- That is, young gymnasts who read this interview do not need to be afraid of giving birth?

- All, of course, individually. But on my own I can say that going on maternity leave is not so scary. Of course, this is a step in a career, but if you build a chain in your head leading back to the gym, then it will be easier to return. For example, I finished training right after the Olympics in Rio and only a month later found out that I was pregnant. I returned to training in September 2017, that is, three months after giving birth, at the same time I stopped breastfeeding. By the summer of 2018, she was already in good shape.

“There was a feeling that you don’t even know what it is to raise your hand and do the exercise”

- They said that you do not like to run and diet. How did you lose weight?

- A lot went away immediately after giving birth, in the first week. I started training without any diets, I just watched my diet, but there was no goal to lose weight due to food restrictions. The weight continued to decrease due to the loads, the body put itself in order.