Double Olympic champion in saber fencing Sophia the Great prepares taking into account the admission of the Russians to the selection for the Paris Olympics, Dmitry Glotov, head coach of the Russian swordsmen, told .
Last week, the FIE Congress voted to extend the suspension of Russians from international tournaments until March 2023. The question of the admission of Russian athletes will be raised at an extraordinary congress, which will be held before start of qualifying for the 2024 Olympics.
– Sophia started training in September and immediately planned to participate in the Moscow Saber. Already in September, she began to conduct individual training – even before the first general training camp in Abu Dhabi. I missed this collection myself, but I prepared it here. She did not participate in the first tournament of the season in Novosibirsk, but she came to training camp and worked with everyone,” Glotov told a correspondent.
– Sophia is preparing with the hope that we will still be allowed to qualify for the Olympics?
– Oh, sure. We understand that if we are allowed to qualify, we will enter with zeros. Therefore, we will go through a group, so during training camps I focus on 5-hit fights. This is where it all starts: you have to decide what to hit the next day as a group. If you work badly, it is not a fact that you will enter the main grid.
– It turns out that the athletes have to be even better physically prepared than during the previous selection?
And psychologically too. There was no need for fencing in the preliminary competition. And now they will have to go out on both days of the individual championship, and then still be able to work on the third day – as a team.
Source : MatchTV
