Anastasia Davydova - Synchronised Swimmer

Anastasia Davydova 

Anastasia Davydova was born on the 2nd of February 1983 in Moscow, Russia she is an Olympic competitor in synchronised  swimming and has won 5 gold medals.
When Anastasia was younger her parents would take her to the nearby pool, at the age of six she joined the Russian synchronised swimming academy, in the same academy was Anastasia Yermakova they joined together in a partnership and were performing duets.
In 2001 the pair won the silver medal  (FINA World Championships - Fukuoka) The pair than decided to take things further and competed in the Olympics they won golds at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

 The Pairs relationship (Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Yermakova):

Both of the Anastasia's have a lot of similarities, both born in the same place and attended the same swimming academy. In 2008 Yermakova discussed the relationship saying “We’ve been training and competing together for ten years. We never argue and we only have to look at each other to know what the other is thinking.” 
However when Yermakova decided to pause competing Davydova kept on practicing and competing, forming a partnership with Natalia  Ishchenko the pair won five world championships. Then after competing for a couple more times however after the 2012 games she announced that she was retiring from competing and wanted to take up coaching instead. 

A Video interview with Anastasia Davydova 

After the 2012 Olympics, at the age of 29 Anastasia Davydova retired from competing and put all her efforts and skills into becoming a coach. A month after turning thirty she became a full time coach and now is training those who want to compete in synchronised swimming, she wants to bring up a new generation of champions for Russia. 
When asked what skills it  takes to be a trainer she responded with "It takes more than just skills to coach...patience is the main thing, and i'm doing my best to stay calm because when you've perfected your own sport, you just don't understand how others can find i difficult, other than that i am experienced enough to train others and explain to my charges what needs to explained in great detail. 

After retiring Anastasia Davydova had the choice to teach synchronised swimming abroad for a higher pay right, however she chose "results over money" and believes that Russian training is better because in their training "sport comes before school...training takes up most of their time from about age of nine, so they are fully able to compete for the national team if and when they are called up" Anastasia spends up to 13 hours at the poolside training to ensure that Russia winning golds at the Olympics for synchronised swimming still goes on.  

References:

The Telegraph. 2018. Anastasia Davydova. [online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/international-athletes/9427413/Anastasia-Davydova.html. [Accessed 21 June 2018].

Edubilla.com. 2018. Anastasia Davydova. [online] Available at: http://www.popflock.com/learn?s=Anastasia_Davydova. [Accessed 21 June 2018].

RT Sport. (2013). Olympic star Davydova rates gold over cash in synchro coaching role. [online video]. 7 January 2013. Available at: https://youtu.be/l72Pi6OFQRU. [Accessed 21 June 2018]