Victoria's totally amazing secrets

Viktoria Meshkova won five out of six rounds getting the Lead and Boulder golds in the European Championship in Moscow. This must be one of the biggest sensations in the climbing history as her previous best was #16 out of eleven Lead and Boulder WC's last year. Add to that the quarantine this spring meant just training at her apartment for two months and that she got Covid-19 one month ago. In total, she could just do five sessions in the climbing gym prior to the Euro Championship. (c) Nikita Tsarev

Dmitry Sharafutdinov, the Russian training coach who has won three World Championships and who is famous for mainly done pull-ups as his training regime, says that probably hard physical training 20+ hours a week in her apartment during the two months lockdown is the best explanation.

"The secret of her success is probably the spring lockdown. Everyone was at home. Communication only online. I wrote a training program. At home, Vika performed an enormous amount of physical training. Like me in my best years. 5 times a week, for 4-5 hours. (But the exercises are a secret.) Fingerboard was done regularly. But that was not the main one. Rather, the emphasis was on training large muscles. We used a little bit of everything. But no matter how strange it may sound, I took a lot from figure skating and alpine skiing. Not much with weights, mostly with her own weight.

A month ago, a test for coronavirus gave a positive result and she isolated herself. The disease was mild. She was under the supervision of a doctor of the Russian national command team. As soon as the symptoms went away she began training. Online first, and after negative tests five times at the climbing gym. It's hard for me to say now what played a decisive role. Perhaps rested."