Ukrainian star Viktoria Karpenko has officially retired from gymnastics. "I had injury problems with my wrist for a long time and then finally had an operation a while ago", she said during the Ukrainian Championships, held in Kiev in September. Sporting a new short hairstyle, Karpenko appeared relaxed and smiling while watching the competition. "It wasn't easy for me and things weren't going very well, so in the end I just decided that I had to give up gymnastics." She hopes to join the circus in Moscow in the not too distant future: "I have contacted them and we have had some discussions, but nothing is finalised yet", she said of her plans.

Karpenko's Olympic team-mate Galina Tyryk called it a day after returning from the World Student Games in Beijing. "I'm just training now to keep in shape, I have applied to the Cirque du Soleil and hope something will work out with them", she explained. "I injured myself before going to the World Student Games, so I could only do bars there which was really disappointing." The calm Tyryk was set to return to her hometown of Lvov after the championships. Tyryk's coach Lyudmila Korolenko recently relocated to Canada where she took up a position with Winstonettes gymnastics club.

Unlike Tyryk and Karpenko, Olga Teslenko says she still plans to continue in gymnastics but sat out the competition with a sore wrist. "It's an old injury and it just flared up again at the World Student Games. That was the first time I had a chance to vault on the new vaulting table and it was a bit hard." Teslenko busied herself with coaching duties during the competition, a task she said she enjoyed. "I'm studying to be a coach and I really like it, this is some practice for me." One of her protégés at the Ukrainian championships was young Inna Teslenko. When asked whether they were related, Olga laughed: "No, we just have the same family name. What is really funny, though, is that my sister's name is also Inna Teslenko, but she is a good bit older than this Inna."

umnitsa & nora schuler