Mariana Vasileva: huge thanks to Mehriban Aliyeva!

The Azerbaijani rhythmic gymnastics team is very grateful to Mehriban Aliyeva, the First Vice President of the country, president of the Azerbaijan Gymnastics Federation for her support, the head coach of the Azerbaijani rhythmic gymnastics team, Mariana Vasileva told in an interview with the Vestnik Kavkaza correspondent.

”First of all I want to congratulate the First Vice President of Azerbaijan and the President of the Gymnastics Federation of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva. We are grateful for her support, and, of course, the country's President, Ilham Aliyev’s support during their presence at the opening of the Championship. We are very proud that they were with us. Even when they were not in the hall, we felt their support. Thank you so much. We are glad that we managed to please them with our results. We will work even harder,” Vestnik Kavkaza quotes the coach as saying.

Mariana Vasileva also congratulated the whole country on the achieved result. “Of course, this is a great success for us. The goal was achieved at one hundred percent, to the maximum. For us, the most important thing is that the group team received a license. In the individual exercises, we knew very well that we could not win two licenses for the Olympics, because all our gymnasts are still very young, two of them were performing at the World Championships for the first time. We relied on the most experienced athlete, Zohra Agamirova. Last year, she participated in the World Championship for the first time, and got to the top 25, ranked 24th. She became the 16th at the qualification World Championship for the Olympic Games. Zohra is a great athlete and hard worker. I think she will achieve even bigger success in the future, " the coach said.

“I am extremely happy for the group team. It was very important for us. It’s very difficult to perform at home. It’s always difficult for our girls because they want to perform better to please our fans. And many thanks to the fans. I know that today, on the final day, all tickets were sold. I am very glad that we have a culture of gymnastics, and our people understand that this is rhythmic gymnastics, "she said.

Answering Vestnik Kavkaza’s question about the distinctive features of Azerbaijani rhythmic gymnastics, the head coach emphasized that it is a great pleasure to hear when people talk about the rhythmic gymnastics school of Azerbaijan. “You are not the first to say this. It shows that we are following the right path and creating our own school. It was my task. When I arrived, the leadership set this task before me 10 years ago - to create our own school. I think that we were able to take the best elements, the most interesting ones from Asian culture, European culture,Soviet culture, added some pepper from Bulgarian gymnastics, and of course, showed Muslim flavour, because it is important compound. That is how we became interesting, " Mariana Vasileva said.