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| Aliya Mustafina after last night's all around competition, where she won a bronze medal. Courtesy RGF |
In the meantime, I wanted briefly to review the Russian press, which includes a couple of short interviews with Aliya, and an Itar-Tass discussion with Alexander Alexandrov, the first Russian language press coverage of the charismatic coach since well before his departure from Russia three months ago, and the first time that he has spoken in Russian about the reasons for his resignation, and his relationship with Aliya Mustafina.
Aliya Mustafina : 'I need better health' - interview with Elena Vaitsekhovskaya/Sports Express
She says that in order to do better against the Americans, she needs to be in better health, and to strengthen her vault. Everything in the AA final went as she planned. In qualifying she had been extremely nervous and shaky, but for some reason in the final she had felt that everything would turn out all right.
She speaks of the stability of the American girls and compliments Jinnan Yao as a nice girl and a good gymnast. Vaitsekhovskaya mentions that Grebyonkin seemed a little worried about bars final; Mustafina says she has a new programme; and that generally it takes at least a year for a new routine to bed in. She had been practising her gold medal winning Olympics routine for two years. When asked if she found it distracting to perform in a group with all the top gymnasts; especially when others began to fall off beam, she responded that she was only thinking of her own performance. And on floor, she says it was just her aim to finish off the day nicely, and to dance a little bit :-).
Aliya Mustafina : 'I was a little bit surprised by the beam score' - interview with I Rasskasova/Sovietski Sport
Aliya says that in beam qualifying she was much worse than in the final, and yet the score was about the same; she doesn't know how to understand it. But she doesn't like to question the judges; perhaps the routine looked different to outside observers to the way it had felt to her on the inside when performing it.
When asked about her floor performance, and whether she was completely satisfied, she said she was a little disappointed as she had failed to complete her triple Y turn. However, it is a new routine, so that's to be expected and she didn't want to get upset. Indeed, to the contrary, she went straight to Rodionova to help her to prepare for bars. She felt that Anna had performed well in her first major competition.
Alexander Alexandrov: 'I left Russia to shield Mustafina from non-sporting issues' - interview with Albert Starobutsev/ITAR-TASS
In this interview Alexander revisits some of the points in his earlier interview about the reasons for his departure from Russia, and talks about his work in Brazil.
He adds some points regarding the Russian team in Antwerp; that he is surprised that Grishina is not on the team; after her poor performance at the Olympics last year he expected she would be targeting these Championships; he felt that all of the girls from the Olympics should have been here, with the exception of Komova who has been ill.
With reference to the team's participation in the University Games in Kazan, he says he does not feel that the competitive programme this year was too heavy, but that perhaps the training of the team needed to be planned differently.
He emphasises that the only reason he left Russia was to protect Aliya Mustafina after Valentina Rodionenko had begun to make unfair statements about her to the press. He adds that he has seen Aliya at these Worlds, they are on good terms; they embraced, and he wished her a happy birthday. Aliya's father has told him that Aliya will only ever have one coach: Alexander Alexandrov.
Aliya Mustafina - vault
Aliya Mustafina - bars
Aliya Mustafina - beam
Aliya Mustafina - floor
With thanks to Rachael Liv for the links.