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| The Shtukman School of Gymnastics, Voronezh. Courtesy bloknot-voronezh.ru |
The local infrastructure of Russian gymnastics supports the mass base of participation necessary to develop future champions. The quality of buildings and equipment, coach training and the like all influence how well future champions will be able to train, and whether young gymnasts want to participate at all. Russia's sporting investment did not hold up during the post Soviet years when funding priorities and social attitudes to elite sport changed. 2000 Olympic vaulting champion Elena Zamolodchikova did not have a full length vaulting run available at her local gym where she had trained since childhood.
Even at central level money was short. I well remember a television documentary from the late 1990s that showed national training centre Lake Krugloye in a significant state of delapidation. Leonid Arkayev, national coach from 1976 to 2006 said that he could secure moneys from the local Moscow government. You can see the eventual effect of this in the Moscow-centricity of team selections during the late 90s and early 2000s.
Recent improvements at the national training centre have been significant, based on moneys coming from both central government and sponsors VTB (the second largest bank in Russia who make much publicity out of their involvement with Olympic sports). But Krugloye will only have gymnasts to train in future thanks to the efforts of the regions. Over past years this blog has featured details of the improvements going on in the Russian regions designed to support and enhance participation. For example, in Ksenia Afanasyeva's hometown, Tula, a new gym opened. The Siberian men's team is now one of the best in the Russian Federation.
The latest news is about Voronezh School of Gymnastics, opened in 1968 by legendary Soviet coach Yuri Shtukman, once coach to Liubov Burda, and mentor to the iconic coach Vladislav Rotstorotsky (Ludmilla Tourischeva, Natalia Shaposhnikova, Natalia Yurchenko). It is not a very beautiful looking building, particularly with all the scaffolding around it, but about 350 young gymnasts train there. Voronezh of course is home to World and Olympic silver medallist all around, Viktoria Komova, whose home gym this is. I do recall her commenting at one point that in the small gym where she used to practice there was not all the equipment needed, and that sometimes it was more than uncomfortably cold. In this news story we read that gymnasts are currently training in a rented room, without all apparatus available to them.
This is a temporary measure, while refurbishment of the old school takes place. All will be ready on the 1 August, all being well. There has been an 800 million Rouble (roughly £1.6m) improvement including overhaul of the sanitation, water supply, roof, walls, ventilation, heating the lighting. All the windows are in the process of being replaced, and they are refacing the granite.
I wonder if the funding for this comes on the back of Viktoria's successes? There is no clear indication of who is funding it - often a mix of central and local money with some sponsorship thrown in.