That’s right, it was called Trading Places. However Nadezhda wasn’t named in that documentary and was on screen for under 10 seconds.
It’s Olesya or Olesia, but never Olesyia or Olesiya. Sometimes it’s translated with an extra S for some reason. The same is written and pronounced the same in both Russian and Ukrainian languages.
Trading Places was filmed in March 2001 and televised in August 2001. It didn’t exactly go as planned though. The British gymnasts all trained at Dynamo in Moscow, which was quite used to receiving overseas gymnasts but originally they were supposed to go to Dynamo in Rostov on Don, which is where the gymnasts who came to Britain were from.
Like a lot of people in western Ukraine, the Motak family have Polish citizenship entitlement from when that part of Ukraine was Polish. Poland has no funding or national structure for gymnastics. There are a number of gymnasts from various countries with Polish eligibility who have attempted to or explored the possibility of competing for Poland and it’s never been successful.
She had incredible basics and a strong sense of performance. I was obsessed for a while, before I realized I broke my rule of getting attached to juniors. No mas for me: nice try, Gabrielle Hardie!
She competed at the woga classic in early 2004, I think it was after that
Fair points, but she had a certain quality that I just loved. I also had a soft spot for her 1989 WC FX because she performed it to Gershwin's Second Rhapsody (not Rhapsody in Blue --Second Rhapsody was lesser-known but almost equally brilliant). I grew up listening to lots of classical music and jazz, and Gershwin was my family's absolute favorite composer. I watched '89 World TF with my parents. When Dudnik took the floor in Stuttgart and we heard the first few notes of Second Rhapsody, our hearts melted.
I really liked Johnson. She was very easy to watch.
