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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. https://youtu.be/SZ7ISMDvxzs ">https://youtu.be/SZ7ISMDvx...
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& #39;t have had to train as she had just come back from the World Championships and was owed time off. But she wasn& #39;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& #39;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& #39;t continue despite the coaches urging her to.
