girls all hurried into the gym. Ellie and Nancy waved goodbye to Katya and Lexi and went to join the other Pre-Elite girls, who were already lined up on the blue mat waiting for Oleg Petrescu.
The eccentric and brilliant coach had once been an international gymnast, training alongside many of the greats. He had a reputation for being fierce one minute and cuddly the next. ‘A bit like a bear,’ Nancy whispered as they waited for him to come over. ‘Only you don’t know if he’s going to be a teddy bear or a grizzly from one minute to the next.’
Oleg had a comical appearance. Like many gymnasts he was small, but since he had retired from competing he was nearly as round as he was tall. He had a large curling moustache like an old-fashioned strongman, and he liked to wear flamboyantly coloured tracksuits, usually in patterns that were about twenty years out of date.
Today he was looking incredibly fierce, despite sporting a pink and yellow tracksuit in a shiny material that made him look a bit like a small round spaceman. He did not even smile as he walked along the line of gymnasts, inspecting each of them as if he were a sergeant-major in front of a parade. Ellie felt nerves flutter in her stomach.
‘This year I am bringing a new regime to the Academy,’ Oleg announced in a loud booming voice that seemed too big for his little body. ‘In holidays I spend time in Romanian gymnastic school, where I train as boy. Things are very different over there.’
‘Uh-oh,’ whispered Nancy under her breath. ‘This sounds worrying.’
Oleg shot her a look. ‘In Romania, coach is like god,’ he said, his voice booming off the high roof of the gym. ‘The gymnasts, they obey without question.’
‘He thinks he’s a god now?’ whispered Kashvi.
‘In England there is not so good discipline,’ said Oleg glaring even more fiercely. ‘But in Oleg’s class, no more!’ he declared, waving his arms wildly to stress his point. Next to her, Ellie could feel Nancy trying hard not to giggle. ‘We will train Romanian-style. We will work like in army – bootcamp, drill, silence! And in this way I will make great gymnasts of you all.’
Bootcamp – army style – drills! This was worse than Oleg’s healthy eating obsession! Ellie glanced at Camille, Kashvi and Bella, all of whom were looking as alarmed as she felt. Of course, Scarlett wore her usual smug smile, as if she had nothing to fear from Oleg’s terrifying new training regime.
‘Well, I might as well give up now,’ muttered Nancy.
‘Does anyone want to quit?’ asked Oleg, fixing his stare on Nancy, his eyes bulging. ‘Because if you cannot take the heat, is time to get out of Oleg’s kitchen.’
‘Um . . .’ Nancy started to say, but Ellie jabbed her hard in the ribs.
‘You!’ said Oleg, transferring his gaze to Ellie and eyeballing her suspiciously. ‘You are Elizabeth Trengilly, right?’
‘Um – yes,’ said Ellie, colouring as Nancy let out a snigger next to her. No one ever 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