Children with special needs from Kazan begin rehearsing at the Academy ahead of the Alina-2024 festival

Children with special needs from Kazan started rehearsals at the Alina Kabaeva Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy before the Alina-2024 festival.

We spoke with the ideological inspirer and leader of the group from Tatarstan's capital Lira Tazetdinova, as well as with Safina Shaigardanova, one of the young athletes.

Lira spoke about the support of Olympic champion Alina Kabaeva.

“We arrived for the first time to watch this festival and had a dream to participate ourselves. Alina Kabaeva, her whole team supported us in that. They invited us to a training camp and we practiced here in the Academy, feeling ourselves as full-fledged athletes. The attitude of everyone was such that we simply felt ourselves accepted by the best Russian athletes. And this confidence helped us to achieve certain results. We have a very important routine. This is very responsible and very exciting for us, for parents and for the coach. And this is a very important event,” she said.

And gymnast Safina shared her emotions from the Academy’s training camp.

“I flew here to the Alina festival. We haven’t been here long since and wanted to be here once again. Alina Kabaeva invited us to perform, to make it look good. I have come to perform only, and not to rest.  What I do best is dance with the ribbon, but also bridges, the split, the cartwheel, and ‘heron.’ And the wave too,” Safina said.

The Alina 2024 festival will be held on March 2 at the Academy in Sochi, and on March 5 it will be hosted by the Minsk Arena.