The 27-year-old archer from the city of Lesnoy won a silver medal in the team competition, but took only 17th place in the individual championship. Friends from Lesnoye told about the talented girl.
Anna Kuminova, classmate:
– Ksyusha started shooting class from the 5th or 7th – after lessons she always went straight to the section, not missing training. No wonder that soon, after the 9th grade, she was invited to the Olympic reserve school.
Ksenia is a very cheerful, positive person with a great sense of humor, the soul of the company. She was always a cheerleader and a laughing matter in class. She sang in the school choir. We had a small class (only 19 people) so we were very friendly. I remember how she won the competition and when she entered the classroom, we all got up and greeted her with thunderous applause. Ksyusha was embarrassed.
We are all still in touch. Now Xenia has changed. After she got married and gave birth to her daughter Christina a year ago, she became even more responsible. Since childhood, she was very stubborn and purposeful, she always achieved what she wanted! But now these qualities have only increased, and the proof of this is her performance at the Rio Olympics.
Dmitry Podeferov, editor-in-chief of the Lesnoy 24 portal, designer, photojournalist:
– Ksyusha once said that as a child she simply did not know which section to go to. I chose archery, just not to run: she just wasn’t a fan of moving around since childhood! Later I realized that I got a little excited with expectations: I have to run a lot at the training camp … In general, archery in Lesnoye could hardly be called a promising sport until Ksyushin’s success: there is one of three dozen types developed by the youth sports school, and that’s it. And now a lot has changed: Ksenia’s coach Stanislav Popov, while continuing to live in Lesnoy, became the head of the regional Archery Federation. His son Vitaly is confidently following in the footsteps of Ksenia – he recently became the European champion. Ksyusha made archery the most popular with us!
Unfortunately, her tight training schedule (two workouts every day) does not allow her to actively participate in the sports life of the city, and as a person she is very modest, she tries to devote her rare days visiting her parents to loved ones. I am sure that now, at the Olympics, she is thinking about the pleasure with which she will return to her family and her beloved daughter.
Ksenia’s current victory is very important for us, foresters, because it gives hope for the future: the fact is that the city is called the city of the Olympians, since for 50 thousand people and a rather short history, there are already 11 participants in the Olympic Games in Lesnoy. The vast majority of them are prize-winners and winners. There is a rumor in the city that we are the best in the world in terms of the number of Olympians per capita. And the youth who grew up on this faith saw the participation of a forester in the Games for the last time only in 2004. It began to seem that all this is just a legend … But the victories of Ksenia and the performance of Vova Maslennikov in bullet shooting will let us be proud again!