Athletistic / Olympic Games. The collapse of the USSR changed not only the political map of the world, but also the foundations of world sports. It so happened that sports bases were spread over almost the entire territory of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of borders after 1991 greatly influenced the opportunities of athletes. Something similar happened in artistic gymnastics.

If in 1992, at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, ​​the united team won 9 (!) gold medals (although six of them were won by Minsk resident Vitaly Shcherbo), then the results of the Russian team began to decline. In Atlanta in 1996, Russian gymnasts won three gold medals, in Sydney in 2000, the Russians climbed to the top step of the podium four times, and in Athens in 2004, they failed to win a single gold medal. But if in the Greek capital, Russian gymnasts had silver and two bronzes (achieved thanks to the efforts of the women’s team), then in Beijing 2008, thanks to the efforts of Anton Golotsutskov, Russia received only two bronzes. That’s all. The women’s part of the national team was left without a single medal.

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And on this field, which was practically burned after the Olympics, gymnasts began to appear in the Celestial Empire, instilling hope in the hearts of fans and specialists. One of the most prominent representatives of the new generation of Russian gymnastics was Aliya Mustafina.

Aliya was born into a sports family – her father Fergat won a bronze medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. Mustafina started gymnastics at the age of six, which is very late by the standards of this sport. However, the girl’s results were almost immediately incredible: one after another, Aliya won children’s competitions, and a little later she won 5 gold medals at the III Student Spartakiad. But like any film or book, this scenario had to take an unexpected and tragic turn. Mustafina had two of them. The first happened in juniors, when Aliya stopped training due to a conflict with her coach Dina Kamalova. However, after a few weeks, she returned to sports and joined the coach Alexander Alexandrov. We will return to the second tragic turn a little later.

Photo source: CSKA

At the age of 15, Mustavina became the winner of the Russian Cup in the all-around, and a year later, in 2010, she shone on the international stage, winning two gold medals (individual and team competition) at the World Championships in Rotterdam. But it was after this that disaster struck – while preparing for the 2011 season, Aliya, while performing a jump in training, tore the cruciate ligaments in her left knee. Due to this serious injury, she missed almost a year, so the preparation for her first Olympics was crumpled and incomplete. A few months before the start of the 2012 Olympics, the coaches of the Russian national team were not sure whether Mustafina would be able to perform in London.

Alexander Alexandrov led the Russian women’s team to the Olympics in the capital of Great Britain. He trained Mustafina from childhood and had in his arsenal absolutely all the tools with which he could achieve Aliya. Probably, it was this “coach-student” relationship that helped Russian gymnastics return to the world elite.

At the 2012 Olympics, Mustafina qualified for the finals of the all-around competition and two separate events: uneven bars and floor exercise. On the fourth day of the Games in London, she won a silver medal in the team all-around competition as part of the Russian team.

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Two days later, Aliya, in an incredibly intense struggle, won a bronze medal in the individual all-around competition. Based on the sum of four apparatuses, she received exactly the same number of points as the American Alexandra Raisman, but she ultimately outperformed the American representative in the protocol according to an additional indicator, in which the sum of points on three out of four disciplines was calculated, without taking into account the points on the worst apparatus. It is important to note that in the individual all-around competition, Aliya received a mind-blowing score of 16,100 points from the judges for her program on the uneven bars. This made her a favorite of the competition on this apparatus in some events.

The uneven bars final took place on August 6. By the will of fate, Aliya competed after her main competitors – her compatriot Victoria Komova, British Elizabeth Tweddle and Chinese He Kexin. He Kexin had the highest difficulty (7,100 points), while Mustafina, Komova and Twiddle declared programs worth 7,000 points. Mustafina went on stage knowing that her rivals were far from perfect, and at that moment, He Kexin was in the lead with a score of 15.966. In other words, it was enough for Mustafina to simply repeat her combination on the uneven bars in the individual all-around competition to bring Russia its first Olympic gold medal in artistic gymnastics in 12 years. Perhaps this is what gave Aliya confidence. Mustafina did everything so perfectly that she managed to surpass her all-around result and received 16.133 points from the judges! Aliya won Russia’s first Olympic gold medal in gymnastics in the 21st century.

Video taken from the YouTube channel “Vlad Gusakov”. The rights to it belong to the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

At the age of 17, Aliya became the most successful Russian athlete at the London Olympics, winning four medals (gold, silver and two bronze). Four years later, at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Aliya became the legitimate heir to the legendary Svetlana Khorkina, winning two Olympic gold medals on the uneven bars. But it was after the 2012 Olympics that Mustafina wrote her name in the history of world sports. This is confirmed by the recent rating of the authoritative American sports publication ESPN, which placed the Russian gymnast in 13th place in the list of the best Olympians of the 21st century. Bravo!

Nikita Serbakov, Athletistic



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