Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

A great day for the Russians as beautiful Anna Dementieva took gold on beam, and spritely young Yulia Belokobylskaya presented a wonderfully precise floor routine for the bronze medal. This means that all four Russian girls medalled at these championships, if you count Aliya Mustafina's leading performance in qualifications - and despite Aliya's unfortunate absence from finals, the Russian girls medalled in all but one event - vault.  So a good competition all things taken into account,  Go today to the Russian Federation's website to see a lovely picture of happy Anna and Yulia. Well, we are all sad that Aliya is facing such a difficult recovery - but confident she will make the best of it in the long run.  In the meantime, the remaining team members have a chance to step up and make their contribution to Russian gymnastics, and it will be interesting to see how the various gymnasts perform under the spotlight,  I for one was highly encouraged by the strong, stable and

Tatiana Nabieva gave a good account of herself today, recording 4th place in the vault final and a creditable silver on bars.  But in an interview with Sports Express, Tanya suggests that her silver could have been gold had she connected two of her special skills - I'm guessing she means her own version of the Tkachev and the Pak somersault. Read a rather stilted Google translation of the article here .

I am grateful to the All Around News page for providing this link which sadly confirms the diagnosis of a torn ligament in Aliya's left knee.  Aliya will undergo an operation in Munich next week, undertaken by one of the best specialist surgeons in this field. This effectively rules Aliya out of the next World Championships; as Alexandrov says, her job now is to get better.  All good wishes to her. Ironically, this now rules out a head to head with her compatriot Viktoria Komova until Olympic year, in all probability ... Alan Owen advises me that the date of the operation will be April 12th.

Apparatus finals day 1 start lists Apparatus finals day 2 start lists Women's judging assignments, apparatus finals note we have a Swiss head judge on vault Longine's directory of results

Overnight reports suggest that the Queen's knee injury is not a torn meniscus.  Indeed, unofficial channels have led me to believe that 'all will be OK' in time. I'll update as soon as I hear more. Best wishes to our Queen for a healthy and speedy recovery.  Take your time, Aliya, and come back to competition all the stronger. And oh, dear reader, please send Aliya a get well message - at Alan Owen's Get Well Soon Campaign Page here x

Ouch.  No doubt by now you all know that poor Aliya Mustafina suffered a torn meniscus on landing her first vault of the all around competition.  So now my heart hurts almost as much as my hand, and my thoughts are with Aliya, her team mates and her coaches, who must be going through an agony of pain and uncertainty, physical and otherwise, at present. I am however delighted at the victory of that most Russian of gymnasts, Anna Dementieva.  Anna is a delightful, strong gymnast; all light, airy amplitude, impressive technique and deceptively steely mentality.  The Russians deserved a little good luck after the bad luck of their prime competitor here, but I don't think this was that lucky a win - Anna was clearly the class act of the field, well ahead of the rest even if this fact is disguised by the somewhat distorted scores of Elizabeth Seitz who experienced a significant 'home advantage'. I cannot say that Dementieva reminds me of any particular gymnast from the past a

Well, folks  ... apologies for current silence ... I have been in hospital for the best part of the week with an injury to my right hand.  I am expecting it will be roughly another ten days before I'm fully operational again and able to post properly :-( Have seen the interesting news about Russian Juniors on Facebook and promise to do some real analysis when I'm back properly.  Oh and there are the Europeans - well I've had to cancel my trip there sadly but then notice there's a chance worlds may move to Moscow - a dream of mine to travel there though I do wish Japan all the love in the world. Back soon, dreaming every night of the beautiful Russians and hoping for great successes for them in coming days.