Maria Filatova – the first ever picture taken of her doing gymnastics! By kind permission of Maria Filatova Kourbatova My first memory of Maria Filatova is a little girl with huge, white ribbons in her hair, so tiny she seemed to have to stand on tiptoe to be able to see over the balance beam. At 4’ 6” tall, she was the smallest competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, yet she was already part of the Soviet senior team, competing alongside such established stars as Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Elvira Saadi and Olga Korbut. The ‘Siberian Sparrow’, trained in Leninsk-Kuznetsk by Innokenty Mametyev since a very early age, celebrated her 15 th birthday on the 19 th July 1976, the day of the team final. That night, she slept with her first – not her last - Olympic gold medal beneath her pillow. For all her cuteness, Maria Filatova was a fearsome gymnast and competitor. If the crowd were awed by the pyrotechnics of Romanian technician Nadia Comaneci, they we...
Queen Elizabeth you should be crowned! Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
ReplyDeleteI am already wearing my tiara (less heavy than a crown).
However, I think that the feed is now down due to weight of traffic.
Trust the Russians to underestimate how much we love them!
actually it worked just fine for me. beautiful sets by Aliya, so glad to see her on all four events! No Mustafina dismount (but a double full was stuck nonetheless) on the bars and a little correction on the low bar, but aside from that a gorgeous routine. her beam was relatively simple, but so very clean. I had some technical difficulty when it came to her floor and since there was no music, I'm not sure whether she did a new routine.. it looked a bit different. her passes are still quite easy but the height is back! and also on the vault- I think she did two- Yurchenko and either a FTY or DTY I wasn't sure, because the angle was weird. Grishina fell twice but her floor was gorgeous. Well, the girls are taking it easy but they're definitely on the right track.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for update. I have been in a meeting so wouldn't have seen it anyway. Very glad to hear that Mustafina is doing so well. Will try to find results later on! Would you mind posting any information you hear?
ReplyDeleteThanks again. x
I barely speak Russian, but here are the first three: Aliya Mustafina 59.something, Ksenia Afanasyeva 58.something, Anastasia Grishina 57.something. The competition has just come to a close. I didn't get a chance to see Afanasyeva's full floor due to a technical problem, but first two passes looked gorgeous. Strong bars and beam. Anna Pavlova did all four events cleanly, but with lack of difficulty. No sign of Nabieva. Belokobylskaya looked quite strong, but I didn't see too much of her. Same with Inshina.
ReplyDeletei've already posted sooo much info on the IG forum (so go there for more info about the meet, also all results are on RGF) but i wanted to leave these links for videos here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/user/DanyZ2012
http://www.youtube.com/user/yannaGym
Thank you soooo much. I really appreciate your effort in posting this information here as soon as you can.
ReplyDeleteI have put a post up now with the detailed results and videos. Keep reading and commenting.
I'm so so pleased that Aliya is back. I was choking up earlier thinking of what it must have taken to recover.