“We prepared for a very long time!” Karolina Tarasova about getting ready for the Sky Grace Cup

Preparing for the all-Russian Sky Grace Cup competition was not easy for the Academy student Karolina Tarasova from Donetsk, but she tried to fight until the very end. Karolina talked about which type worked best for her.

“I really liked performing! I had a very good performance with the jump rope on the first day. My hoop then was not that great. We’re going to change it for me. I did the ball well.  The clubs were also good and the ribbon also. Then I performed with the rope in the final a little bit worse than in the all-around. I did not perform with the hoop. I didn’t make it into the finals but my performance with the clubs and the ribbon was good,” Karolina said.

The gymnast spoke about how control training sessions with Olympic champion Alina Kabaeva helped her.

“It was very difficult at assessment training sessions because it was required to make five kinds with one clean or with two clean performances. Sometimes it did not work out to make it clean at once. We had to revise, rework more. It was very challenging. And the pieces of advice were given — if you lose it, do it to the end, do not get upset, struggle for all the elements, all the skills and risks. All these workouts did me good. Alina Maratovna gave me various advice. It helped me. And even when she criticized, this also benefited me — all her comments,” she said.

Karolina also shared her impressions of the performances of other athletes.

“The girls from the Russian national team, from the Moscow team are very strong. I really like Nikole Rimarachin Diaz, and Nastya Vlasenko, and Sonya Ilteryakova very much.  I like Sonya best because she is very artistic. And I would like to learn to be as she is, very artistic. The competition was certainly fierce. Kristina Voitenko is very strong, and Ksyusha Savinova. Many girls came that were major competitors for me. But I managed,” she said.

Karolina became fourth in the all-around in the Master of Sports candidate program, which will allow her to compete at the international Sky Grace Cup tournament in Minsk.