Last week, the president of the Moscow Swimming Federation Yevgeny Korotyshkin promised to try to help Yulia Efimova find a qualifying start so she can qualify for the Paris Games. So Efimova found herself at the Bahamas championship, but unfortunately did not meet the standards.
“The opportunity was missed, but Yulka did everything she could for the moment. If she had started the Moscow Cup, if all this had happened three days later, even in the same Bahamas, she would have met this standard. The start was the most important moment to achieve maximum performance, maximum form. As a former athlete, I can say that no matter how I unloaded and prepared, without a start I swam 100m three seconds slower. I couldn’t speed up, I think it’s the same story. But there was no time for a reboot.
We looked for competitions everywhere: in Bosnia and Serbia, we even considered Canada, but at that moment we realized that the visa bureaucracy would not give him the opportunity to get to most places on time. remaining competitions. Yulia was in contact with World Aquatics regarding the qualification competitions, all this needed to be clarified, as the result did not count everywhere for Olympic qualification.
We contacted Italy several times to participate in the Seven Hills tournament, but it was no longer possible for the Italians to even open this registration. All this took time, not to mention the visa issue. We just couldn’t keep up.
And then the answer came about the Bahamas. Of course, we understood that this was an adventure that might not live up to our expectations. 25 hours of flight and 200m swim from ship to ball. It’s a big challenge. It was necessary to swim without acclimatization, Moscow time at night.
But if we had not taken advantage of the opportunity, we would have greatly regretted it later. It is better to do it and not want it, than not to do it and bite your elbows.
A lot of people were nervous at the competition, but she didn’t want to push the negativity, and that’s not necessary at first. You know, she still managed a time of 1 minute 07.98 seconds. If I had qualified, I could have gone into the Olympics in very good shape and competed for prizes.
– Why did you decide to support her?
“I understand how difficult it is for the athletes and I try to help them. Our goal has always been to qualify for the Olympics and win that medal. It was a national idea, the idea of a lifetime. Our loved ones supported us throughout our sporting journey so that we could get there.
Turn around and say it doesn’t matter? No, it’s important. These values were instilled in us from childhood. And the fact that she remained loyal to them is worth a lot. Just because they treat us badly there doesn’t mean we should close our doors and abandon our goal of being the best in the world at our sport.
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Source : MatchTV
I’m John White and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. My specialty is covering sports news, which I’ve been doing for over 6 years now. During this time, I have worked as an author with Athletistic, a popular online news website focusing on sports topics.
