Via Sports Express : http://www.sport-express.ru/velena/reviews/50647/

This is a summary/paraphrase of the original interview.













- It seems to me that you have matured greatly since ...





- Rather, I have just learned to work independently, without relying on anyone.





- To be left without a coach in a sport like gymnastics, is not the simplest test for an athlete.





- First it really was very hard. I could not force myself to work and for a long time was unsettled.





- In a recent interview, you said: "you need to give yourself to this sport, and not perceive it as servitude and abuse". Do you think that way?





- Yes. It was just a year ago. I started to train every day and thought: why do I need it? Everything hurts, everything goes wrong. This went on until I had the surgery to clean my joint. It was then that I realized a simple thing: If you want to continue to train and serve, you just have to love everything that you do. First of all, you have to change your own consciousness.





- It was a painful process?





- No. I just told myself I would not do it because I have to, but because I like it. And everything fell into place. I really really like gymnastics. I was thinking about it too much before, and was cheating myself.





- A year ago, Alexandrov went to Brazil, and you broke up with him.





- I never wanted this to happen. At that time there was a situation that we both understood: Alexandrov couldn't coach me if he didn't have charge of the team. Alexander Sergeivich then said it would be better for me if he left.





- After the London Games, I remember your coach saying that you both needed to think carefully before you decided to continue to work together.





- Well, yes. We thought about it for a long time.





- How did things go at the World Championships in Nanning?





- Those people who said I hadn't increased the difficulty of my programmes were absolutely right. One Olympic gold medal is certainly nice. But just because one medal is already hanging around your neck, no one will give you a second. I perfectly understand that I will need to complicate things, if I decide to compete in Rio de Janeiro.





Throughout 2013, I followed a well beaten track - probably, that's OK: it is always hard to start a new Olympic cycle, knowing that four years of hard work are ahead. In addition, I continued to continuously perform at competitions. My competition training would have been disrupted if I had tried to learn something new, although I was training some new things, just not using them in competition.





- The 2013 season ended when you became the world champion on the balance beam.





- It was a miracle. In Antwerp, I had a fairly simple exercise, into which I had not added any new moves. And I am well aware that it is unlikely that such luck will ever happen again. So after the Championships I first started working increasing the complexity of the balance beam. Just then suddenly things became very hard.





- What was the problem?





- Probably, that after the Games in London I was really never able to relax. And on top of that fatigue there were too many competitions. I even thought about finishing my career and doing something different. In the end I found a compromise with the coaches: a month and a half of rest.



