Cyborgs Danchenko: how synchronized swimmers Kolesnichenko and Romashina won Olympic gold in duets

To pronounce the word "competition" in relation to Russian masters of artistic swimming (this is the name of this sport is considered official) for the third decade has become simply indecent. From the point of view of competitive terminology, only one definition is appropriate here: total superiority. It's just that it would hardly be correct to speak only about sports: there will always be people who will ask the question: what is the meaning of the struggle when there is no rivalry at all? When there is neither intrigue nor a hint of it: you can't even go to the bookmakers on the eve of the final.

What then are we talking about?

Perhaps, that over the years of her work with duets, the Russian trainer Tatyana Danchenko managed to bring to absolute perfection the process of teaching a person to control his body in water.

It's just that this internal kitchen of synchronized swimming, as a rule, always remains behind the scenes.

The sport itself is extremely difficult in terms of coordination work.

When half of the body is under water and half is above the surface, the body is exposed to unpredictable loads - the spine becomes vulnerable.

Controlling your own body falls mainly on your hands, and these hands should be incredibly strong, but at the same time feminine and soft.

Problem.

They like to say about Russian synchronized swimmers that they almost sleep in the pool, but there is also an explanation for that: work on land makes the muscles "heavy".

Accordingly, many desirable qualities can be achieved only in water.

And this is hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work.

Danchenko's methods can be considered author's for a long time.

When Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova became Olympic champions of Athens and continued training for the Games in Beijing, Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova suddenly faced a colossal problem: the shoulder joints began to hurt and become inflamed from constantly growing loads, and so much that at one time Asya and Nastya were on land couldn't even raise their hands.

Danchenko then developed a whole system of special exercises for the students - outside of their standard workouts, they swam in special braking belts, worked with rubber.

Danchenko, on the other hand, made sure that the athletes did not forget to drink a lot of water during training - so that the blood did not thicken, and the capillary circulation in the joints did not weaken.

Once I joked in a conversation with a coach, saying that if four more are added to the four synchronized swimmers who were holding leading positions in the Russian Olympic Committee at the time of our conversation, the ROC will be able to perform in synchronized swimming at the Olympic Games as a separate state.

Tatiana then reacted without batting an eye.

“I think that such statistics is a great compliment to our sport. In fact, I'm not surprised: synchronized swimming develops the brain very strongly and teaches you to think quickly. And it requires from the athlete, first of all, precisely these qualities. Accordingly, the leaders are, as a rule, those who, by nature, have everything in order with their heads. In order to work absolutely faultlessly at high speed, you need to have a truly phenomenal ability to concentrate. After all, a huge amount of information has to be processed during a performance. Both internal and external, ”Danchenko explained.

The most interesting studies in relation to Danchenko's wards on the eve of the Tokyo Games (even before the pandemic) were carried out by the Japanese.

We invited two Svetlana - Romashina and Kolesnichenko - to shoot a very popular television program in the country "Body as a Miracle".

They did an encephalogram of the brain, MRI, and did many tests, one of which showed a very powerful release of mirror neurons.

They put an opaque wall between the girls, set a certain rhythm for each of the athletes, and they began to synchronize without seeing each other.

Among other things, the athletes were examined in Tokyo by an oceanologist.

And it turned out that some of the internal organs of Russian girls began to change.

For example, the spleen is enlarged, which is responsible for hypoxia and is always enlarged in seals and dolphins.

At what cost are such easy victories when viewed from the outside, sometimes you can understand by following the coach's Facebook posts.

There have never been complaints or complaints about any external factors: the postponement of the Games, a pandemic, quarantine measures or inconvenient logistics.

Everything is easy, everything is humorous, and even on Wednesday, a few minutes before the start, a video was posted on the network, where Danchenko finishes laying with Romashina, commenting aloud on the process: “Now we will brown it properly, make a bunch, then we will brown it again and only then pin the crown. "

A little more than two weeks ago, the coach wrote in the same joking manner: “Only 19 days to relax.

Today we trained in Ulan-Ude.

The flight is normal. "

They really all three counted the days.

All that year, which lasted almost complete isolation at the Moscow Region "Lake Krugly", then in exactly the same isolation in the Ulan-Ude basin, which was closed to outsiders.

And then there was already a half-forgotten preliminary performance, where Romashina and Kolesnichesko had to start the program anew - at the start they played someone else's music.

However, if this "trifle" knocked the Russian champions off track, they would not be what they are now in the world of synchronized swimming.

Danchenko herself loves to playfully dignify her girls as cyborgs - a symbiosis of human and electronic minds and the power of a machine.

But only eight years ago, at the World Championships in Barcelona, ​​Sveta Kolesnichenko performed in a duet with Romashina for the first time and suddenly "turned off".

“She was wadded from the middle of the program. For the judges, the girls were quite in sync, but I clearly saw this vapacity. She stood and prayed that Svetka would endure. She later admitted that she did not remember at all how she finished the last third of the program. That is, I really did everything unconscious, on autopilot. But now Sveta is one of the most reliable and technical athletes in the national team, and in a duet she is able to match a partner of any level, '' Danchenko said about her athlete.

Immediately after the performance, Svetlana Romashina confirmed that she was completing her phenomenal career immediately after the Games. Well, in Tokyo, the world was once again convinced that two Russian girls really can do anything. And there was no need for them to look back, where China, Ukraine and Japan were desperately trying to share the two vacant steps of the Olympic podium. It is generally unusual for cyborgs to look around ...