Denis Ablyazin
David Belyavski
Nikita Ignatyev
Emin Garibov
Nikita Nagorny
Artur Dalolyan
Ivan Stretovich
Vladislav Polyashov
Dmitri Lankin
Nikolai Kuksenkov
Denis
Head coach Valery Alfosov has unreservedly supported Russian AA champion Nikolai Kuksenkov, naming him to a group of ten gymnasts eligible for participation in Rio even though the gymnast’s selection for international competition is currently impossible due to a positive drugs test.
The RGF is employing Swiss lawyers to defend Kuksenkov’s ‘honour and innocence’. …
Therefore Artistry should not be part of ranking gymnasts in any Code of Points.
Science of Gymnastics Journal 2014:
Due to its nature and relatively poor definitions in the Code of points, judging of artistry may suffer from serious flaws in reliability and validity.
We have used the balance beam artistry evaluation forms given by 5 execution judges at World Championship in Tokyo 2011 to analyze reliability and validity. Data on 194 competitors was gathered.
Deductions were received by a highly variable number of competitors from separate judges in the same components of artistry. The variability of average total artistry deduction was relatively large …
We conclude that neither reliability nor validity of artistry judging was satisfactory in this analysis. …
New national champion Nikolai Kuksenkov has withdrawn from the Russian men’s championships in Penza after it was revealed he tested positive for the banned substance meldonium. …
According to Russian coach and spokeswoman Valentina Rodionenko, Kuksenkov’s test was conducted two weeks ago but the results were only just discovered. …
I can say that on the Russian national team in gymnastics we stopped using the drug even in August 2015! Then the representatives of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency consulted with our doctors, and then withdrew all the supplies of Mildronate from our first-aid kits. …
My morals, values and mental health were a million times more important to me than seeing my name on the wall in the locker room
… I was practically raised by my Russian coaches and knew nothing but tough love and endless yelling. “Eat, sleep, breathe gymnastics” was what we used to say to make fun of ourselves but it was accurate. I couldn’t count the amount of unattended school activities because of practice, the long weekends spent in hotels for competitions and the quarter-sized rips on my hands. However, with all those hardships came the rewards and the gratitude of winning a competition or perfecting a new skill. It was the highs and adrenaline that kept me going – I loved it.
It’s very clear that sports are physically exhausting and injuries happen all the time – I’ve been aware of this since I was maybe seven. When I walked-on for the Penn State Women’s Gymnastics team, injuries became a whole different story. …
Ivana Hong can be defined by her grace, and her family for its courage
“How do you capture Ivana in words?” wondered Chris Swircek, Stanford’s women’s gymnastics associate head coach. “Her movement is so fluid and graceful, all the way down to her hands and her fingertips and the way she holds her head.
“It’s art, right?” …
Hong doesn’t compete to win, she said. She never has. She competes for perfection, or at least the pursuit of it.
Click PLAY or watch her Beam in Finals at Championships 2015 on YouTube.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 