Group exercise gymnasts of the Russian national team from St. Petersburg spoke about their debut performance at the international arena in Beijing

Group exercise gymnasts of the Russian national team from St. Petersburg spoke about their debut performance at the international arena in Beijing.

Team gymnast Alisa Eremeeva shared her impressions and noted that the preparation for the tournament was one of the largest scale in the history of the team:

“We are very happy. We are glad that it is over. We are happy that we were able to show such a result. We prepared a lot, for a very long time. Probably, it was one of the most large-scale preparations in the entire existence of our team. We were helped by Inna Valentinovna Bystrova, Natalia Alexandrovna Lashchinskaya, Tatiana Iosifovna Kolesnikova, our director, and, of course, Elena Anatolyevna, our coach, choreographers, and stage directors. We had assessment training sessions. Everything was reviewed, everything was counted, looked at where and what could be valid and what could not." 

The athlete shared that they followed the performances of their rivals:

"We watched the performances of other teams. We watched something for ourselves, and fundamentally there was a desire to look at teams from other countries. We personally competed with the team of Belarus from those whom we knew directly. And we saw all the others for the first time." 

Agata Barekzai, Alisa Eremeeva, Arina Lavrenova, Anna Nikolaeva and Sofia Solonskaya took second place in the all-around and in the finals with five balls, as well as third place in the finals with three hoops and two pairs of clubs. Their coach is Elena Petunina. 

The gymnasts took second place at the Russian Championships, entered the roster of the national team and got the opportunity to represent the country at the world stage.