called her Elizabeth, and very few people even knew she’d been named after her Aunt Lizzie.
‘So you and this giggling girl here,’ Oleg glared fiercely at Nancy, who instantly stopped sniggering, ‘you must do Challenge Cup if you are to qualify for British Champs.’
‘Yes,’ said Ellie. Nancy nodded seriously.
‘I ask myself if you are even ready for Pre-Elite, but Emma say you will prove yourselves. I hope this is right.’
Ellie’s stomach did a flip. ‘We’ll try,’ she said.
‘Try is not good enough for Oleg!’ he barked. ‘You must succeed – or is back to Miss Darling and her babies for you both, understood?’
Ellie nodded. She glanced over to where Sasha Darling was talking to the scared-looking bunch of new Development kids. She might miss her old coach, but there was no way she wanted to be demoted, and she silently vowed to work so hard that Oleg would never even think of it again.
‘Good, then let us begin!’
The Pre-Elite girls quickly got an idea of exactly what Sergeant Oleg’s training regime involved. First he put them through the most gruelling warm-up they’d ever done in their lives. ‘No amount of medals could ever be worth this pain!’ Nancy observed as Oleg made them hold the plank position for a whole five minutes before making them do two hundred sit-ups in a row.
Then he presented each of them with a training schedule, broken up into ten minute segments of intense repetitions to be completed at top speed. At the end of each segment, Oleg blew a whistle.
‘He thinks he ees ze football ref now!’ whispered Camille as the girls passed between rotations.
‘SILENCE!’ Oleg’s voice boomed out, echoing off the high ceiling of the gym. ‘No slacking, no chatting, no daydreaming – just work, work, work until you drop.’
But in fact the silence rule wasn’t necessary, because if they were going to complete each of the ten-minute rotations they barely had to breathe, let along gossip.
It was pretty intense. In the floor segment, Ellie had to complete three back to back versions of her floor routine, followed by a series of tumbles onto a pile of mats. Then on to the bar, where she had to do sets of top turns, upstart handstands and giants. And the same again on the beam and vault, plus conditioning circuits in between.
As they went along, Oleg stood watching, frowning and occasionally calling out things like, ‘Pull your arm back quicker on the dismount,’ or, ‘You’re not finishing into corners’. It was completely unlike the way they’d trained under Sasha, but to her surprise Ellie found that she really took to it. The new intensity was exhilarating, and she liked the way they were each responsible for their own training programme. They could choose to slack and not complete their repetitions in the set time – or they could rise to the challenge. Ellie had always been self-disciplined, so Oleg’s style suited her perfectly. And there was no time to think of anything but gymnastics, which was kind of wonderful!
On the beam Ellie even managed to perfect flipping over in her tricky front salto followed by a sheep jump. They were both moves she’d done before but the really difficult bit was connecting the two together. Each time she had tried it in the past she had lost forwards momentum and started to wobble.
But then Ellie recalled Katya on the washing line – the way she’d seemed to glide rather than walk, how she’d barely seemed to need the rope to support her at all. Ellie decided to pretend she was on the high wire with just a flimsy piece of string beneath her feet, the only thing keeping her upright the sharp stillness of her body. She tried the move again, flipping up, back and around, and then as she came into the connection she pulled herself sharply upwards, defying the downwards pull of gravity. She imagined that she wasn’t aiming to land on a strip of wood ten centimetres wide, but a tiny sliver of rope.
And it worked. She moved effortlessly from move to move and landed without a wobble. As she came back down to earth she heard a voice from behind her say, ‘Better.’
Ellie nearly fell off when she realised Oleg was talking to her. She’d been so engrossed in practising that she hadn’t even noticed the coach come over to watch her.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to stammer. ‘I think maybe I could try a layout with the sheep jump too.’
But Oleg shook his head. ‘Now is not time for learning new moves,’ he said firmly. ‘You want to qualify at the Challenge Cup, you cannot afford to make mistakes. You play it safe. Stick with what you know.’
‘But if I could put in some new skills, raise my difficulty levels . . .’
‘Forget about difficulty,’ said Oleg. ‘When you prepare for competition, you must think only execution! Execution! Execution!’
Then he moved away. Ellie’s heart sank, particularly when she saw Camille working on a new vault and Bella practising a new skill on the bar, but she knew Oleg was right. For now, she just needed to focus on qualifying. Ellie gritted her teeth and pulled herself back up on to the beam.
Not everyone was so sure about Oleg’s new approach, though. In the changing room after the first session, Nancy declared, ‘I’m a gymnast – get me out of here!’
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ said Bella, who was pulling on her school uniform.
‘It’s the silence that gets me,’ said Kashvi, tying her school tie in a messy knot.
‘Oui! I ’ave never seen Nancy keep quiet for so long in all ’er life,’ remarked Camille, and the others all giggled.
‘Well, I rather enjoyed a rest from the incessant chatter,’ said Scarlett who was brushing out her golden hair in long even strokes. ‘And I found Oleg’s style of training refreshing. But perhaps it requires a dedication and focus that some of you don’t have.’
She looked pointedly at Nancy as she said this. Nancy was about to say something cutting in response, but at that moment Katya appeared along with the rest of Development squad. She was looking very glum.
‘What’s the matter?’ Ellie asked.
‘I do not like that Sasha Darling!’ declared Katya. ‘She make me do cartwheels and round-offs all morning.’
‘Just cartwheels and round-offs?’ asked Ellie, confused. It didn’t sound like the inspirational coach she remembered from Development squad.
‘And walking,’ said Katya, her big violet eyes flashing crossly.
‘Walking?’ said Nancy.
‘She said Katya doesn’t walk right,’ explained Lexi. ‘Because she’s so bendy from the circus.’
Katya wiggled like a worm as if to demonstrate. ‘She tell me I learn bad habits and I have to unlearn them.’
‘Oh,
