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Just learned that the city of Tula has a competition called the "Interregional Artistic Gymnastics Competition for the prizes of Honoured Masters of Sport Kseniya Afanasyeva, Mariya Zasipkina & Kseniya Semyonova"
And here they are alongside coach Marina Vladimirovna Nazarova.
Source: МБУ СШОР "Спортивная гимнастика" г.Тулы
Source: МБУ СШОР "Спортивная гимнастика" г.Тулы
1/ Many of you will know Zasypkina sustained a serious neck injury while training at Round Lake in 2001. Link to the Broken Dolls documentary (2004) she speaks extensively about what happened.
2/ Interesting coincidence is that another former gymnast with the same last name, Svetlana Zasypkina, also had a career ending spinal injury, and went on to play the lead role in the film "Dolly" (Kukolka, 1988). The film is about a gymnast who has a career ending injury...
3/ The day that Mariya was injured she shouldn't have had to train as she had just come back from the World Championships and was owed time off. But she wasn't allowed to go home as she had an exhibition coming up in France. It took 90 mins for the ambulance to arrive.
4/ She was training a new skill for the exhibition. At the time of her injury there were no coaches in the gym. She is apparently lucky the injury happened on a weekday as at that time in Russia even urgent operations didn't take place on weekends.
5/ At first she was intent on returning to gymnastics and making the 2004 Olympics. She was able to walk a few days after the operation on her neck and returned to the gym 6 months later. But she was in a lot of pain and couldn't continue despite the coaches urging her to.
6/ Yekaterina Lobaznyuk is also interviewed in the doco - she was Zasypkina's room mate at the sports university along with Natalya Uchevatkina. Lobaznyuk also retired due to a serious knee injury. She tried coming back 3-4 times before she decided she just couldn't anymore.
