This year the 33rd Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships has already been announced to be held at Budapest, Hungary on May 19 to 21. In line with this event, the draw for this was held last weekend. One of the members of European Union of Gymnastics’ (UEG) technical committee who attended this draw was Bulgarian rhythmic gymnastics legend Maria Petrova and she answered some questions from Hungary’s sports daily, the Nemzeti Sport.
Petrova has something to say about the International Gymnastics Federation’s (FIG) newly edited Code of Points (CoP). She thinks the new CoP was better than the old one, because now there is a balance between the work of the body, the work with the apparatus and the artistic part of the sport, which the old CoP didn’t seem to have. Petrova said that for a moment RG lost that artistry and that there used to be a code where audiences couldn’t even see the face of the gymnasts, since they were just doing one element after another. The new code abolishes that, because it will give more possibilities to more gymnasts to be successful, not only just a few of them, as Petrova believes RG is not only for a few countries but the whole world.
Aside from the CoP, there is another change in the sport of RG, and that is the music accompaniments for routines. Petrova liked this change so much because she believes that if a gymnast is dancing to music with lyrics, she has much more possibilities with the variety of music. Sometimes the words give more intensity to the routines and it can make a connection between how the gymnast performs and what the crowd understands. If the fans know the songs, that is another level of connection, and they would also have more fun.
During this line of questioning, Petrova had a short flashback to the kind of music RG used during her time. She said that pianists used to travel with the gymnastics team all the time. In every competition there was a piano and all teams have their own pianists who would play for them. It was convenient at that time because sometimes the gymnast was late to the music and the pianist can slow down to wait for her.
Maria Petrova is a retired gymnast herself, and when she was asked who among the retired gymnasts she would miss, it wasn’t quite a surprise when she said she loved the gymnastics of Yana Kudryavtseva who retired in January and Margarita Mamun who was rumored to have retired as well, although she said in an interview that she was just resting her injured back. Petrova said she loved both and she would miss them for sure.
Although her favorite gymnasts as of the moment are Russians, Petrova still supports the country she represented during her time, Bulgaria. She still hopes that the Bulgarians will do well in this new cycle even if the European Championships is completely changed. The golden legacy of the Bulgarian RG should be a motivation, Petrova said, because RG is what they loved to do. There was a period in which Bulgarians have lost power, but Petrova was positive that they are now standing up and that they will be hard competitors for the other rivals.
Ever since the European Championships has been held in 1978 until 2016, at the senior events Bulgaria has had a total of 44 gold, 24 silver and 35 bronze. Russia was ahead of them with 92 gold, 37 silver and 22 bronze.
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