12. September 2007  
Stuttgart / Moscow  
Artistic Gymnastics

Russian association excludes WCh gymnasts

Deviatovsky, Lozhechko (RUS)

According to Russian agencies, following the disappointing results of the Russian teams at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart dthe beam European Champion Julia LOZHECHKO and the all-round European champion Maxim DEVIATOVSKYI  were expelled by the national gymnastics association...

Deviatovski, withdrawal after fall on bars...

Hard bandages...
This was apparently agreed at an urgent meeting in Stuttgart, according to the Russian head of gymnastics Andrei RODIONENKO who gave an interview to the agency "All Sport".
"Never before in soviet or Russian history has a competitor left the podium before the end of the competition," - was the reason he gave in the case of Deviatovsky, who had withdrawn from the competition after a fall from parallel bars at a point when he ranked second. "A Russian athlete must complete his exercise on every last apparatus, even if he has only one foot left to stand on." The measure was not meant to sanction the mediocre results but the 'unacceptable behaviour'.
In the case of the 17-year-old European Beam Champion of Amsterdam (2007), Julia Losetschko, Rodionenko criticezed "unprofessional behaviour":
Losetschko, he said, had decided of her own accord to present an exercise which was too easy, which she had 'arbitrarily reshaped', and had thereby given precedence to her own interests rather than those of the team.

Andrei RODIONENKO, in Soviet times the trainer responsible for the juniors of the "Dityatin-Generation" in the Seventies, then head of Soviet women's gymnastics, established Canadian womens' gymnastics in the world elite in the nineties and returned to Russia after Athens 2004.
There he was put in charge of both Russian men's and women's gymnastics after the retirement of Leonid Arkayev.
- gymmedia -