When I was small, my principal trainer - Irina Alexandrovna Viner – worked mainly with older children, and so didn’t give a lot of attention to me and the other younger gymnasts. But still, we always had excellent teachers.

I think a change of trainer isn’t in itself such a terrible thing as long as the new one is of the same caliber. And in any case, before she moves on you can ask the trainer to leave a plan for each gymnast to work through by the time she returns.

To be honest about it, I used to hate those plans. It would say, for example, that I had to run through each routine 3-4 times. But if Irina Alexandrovna was present at my training session and saw me do something very well twice in a row she would never insist on me repeating it a third or fourth time. But when she was away I had to work through the plan from start to finish.