1998
European Championship
Lisbon, Portugal

Another reason I remember my first European championship is because they worked the hind legs off me. I was little and did everything my trainer told me to. The grown-up gymnasts could say they were tired and their training sessions were over because they had to compete the next day. And they would just leave. But I had to keep training, and Irina Alexandrovna would keep me at it right up to the last possible moment. I got so tired that I just couldn’t image how I was going to perform in the evening. Yet I performed well and became European champion.

As a result, those training sessions gave me the technical foundation that was so very valuable when I became a professional, a grown-up gymnast. As they say in music, I could “play from sight” any combination of movements my trainer might throw at me. I’d developed a perfect technique for performing the most complicated elements in rhythmic gymnastics – you could wake me up at 3 in the morning and say “Alina, you need to do this and that”, and I’d do it.

I remember when the games were over I asked the choreographer how well I’d done, and she said “Listen Alina. I don’t know for sure, but I think you’re definitely in the top five or six”. Can you imagine it? It was my first adult European championship! Not a junior competition, but real games with Olympic champions taking part. All the big names in gymnastics! The team leader was Yana Batyrshina. There was nobody better than her at that time, and everyone was sure she would be the winner. But she made a serious mistake. She was upset, of course, but by then she had already been world champion in some individual events. And suddenly this 15 year-old girl comes out, performs everything faultlessly and becomes European champion! Nobody could believe it.