Olympics Once Again
On 28 June 2012, Elena was named as one of coaches to the Canadian Women's Artistics Gymnastics team for the 2012 Olympics in London, England. Kristina Vaculik, who trained under Elena and Valery Yahchybekov at Gemini Gymnastics, was named to the team as well, the first Gemini gymnast and first of Elena's gymnasts, to reach this goal, following her mentor, Elena, to the Olympics.
Team Canada made history when, on 29 July 2012, Team Canada coached by Elena and David Brubaker of Bluewater Gynnastics in Sarnia, earned a berth in the team final event. This was the first time that a Canadian gymnastics team, either male or female, had qualified for the team event in a non-boycotted Olympics. As well, Dominique Pegg earned a spot in the all-around event, and Brittany Rogers and Ellie Black both qualified for the vault finals.
The Team finals were seen as a battle between the Americans, Russians and the Chinese, although the Romanians couldn't be counted out either. The other countries competing were Japan, Italy and Great Britain. The Canadians came out and gave it all they had. Each member of the team, Kristina Vaculik, Dominique Pegg, Ellie Black, Brittany Rogers and Victoria Moors, competed in at least two events. When the scores were tallied, Canada astonished the crowd by coming in fifth, just behind the Chinese, who had won the team event at the 2008 Olympics - a spectacular score for a team which had not been expected to be a contender.
In commenting about the teams, accomplishment, Davydova compared it to winning the all-around gold medal at the 1980 Olympics.
"It was like I just won the Olympics one more time," she said. "For Canada, it was equal to being an Olympic champion. You've seen history two times at the same Olympics. We've never made finals as a team at Olympics, that was one, and then another one, fifth, the best result ever. That's amazing."
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