2000
Olympic Games
Sydney, Australia

“Alina, did you ask the hoop why it let you down?” Why did it jump out of your hands?

There are some things you don’t understand immediately, - you think about them, turn them over again in your mind, analyze them, and after a while you begin to realize what happened. There were problems all the way through the Sydney Games: the training sessions were very hard, there were lots of setbacks, things went wrong and didn’t work out. You know, I even dreamt about the hoop flying out of my hands, but I only remembered that dream after it had all happened…

When Mum phoned me I wept in the way that people probably weep over the ruins of their home. I couldn’t care less whether anyone could see me at that moment or not. Everything was so hopeless, I didn’t know what to do. I just kept thinking “How could this have happened? It should never have happened”! But it did. Obviously I wasn’t destined to give up professional sport just then. Because if I’d won those Olympics, I’d definitely have given up. I’d simply have lost interest.