Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

These pictures of young Ivan Stretovich, taken by Elena Mikhailova at last week's European Gymnastics Championships, are available in a gallery at the Russian Gymnastics Federation website.  I wanted to share a sequence of them with you. Stretovich turns 16 in October, and comes from Novosibirsk in Siberia, where he is coached at the Dynamo club by B Konvissar.  This young gymnast emerged at April's Russian Championships, where he took gold or silver medals in every event final except for vault.  In Montpelier, he contributed to the Russian team's silver medal. But pictures speak louder than words, and medals aren't all that matters.  Stretovich's start values (in qualifying 5 (F), 5.1 (PH), 4.8 (SR), 5.4 (V), 5.1 (PB) and 4.9 (HB) leave some room for development, but the special quality of his work is even rarer than a double twisting double back somersault.  That quality is the ability to elevate the simple to a pitch of perfection, and to make the difficul

Just browing the Russian Olympic Committee website and came across this picture. I recognise the leotard from the 2009 Japanese competition - I think - but who do you think this is? My best guess is Tatiana Nabieva.

Coaches and gymnasts of Russia enjoy their silver medal at yesterday's European Championships.  The gymnasts are, left to right : Alexander Balandin, Anton Golotsutskov, Emin Garibov, David Belyavski, Denis Ablyazin.  Picture courtesy of the RGF . Russia's men yesterday consolidated their recent improvements with a second place in the senior team event that emphasised their strength as individual apparatus specialists.  The team had to carry weak third scores on certain events : in particular, pommels and high bar, where Golotsutskov was surely a compromise selection.  Had they eliminated just one of the four falls they suffered during the course of the competition, silver could have become gold. It wasn't a bad result then, for the Russians, and we still have today's event finals to look forward to.  I hope the gymnasts' experiences here will prepare them for a stronger performance in London in a few weeks' time, when it will really matter.  Good luck to

16 year old Ivan Stretovich is from Novosibirsk.  Photo courtesy of the RGF . Great Britain have dominated the Junior European Championships so far this week, following up on their win in team qualifications with the all around competition where Frank Baines took first place, followed by Nile Wilson in second.  Switzerland's Eddy Yusof finished in third place.   Russia's representatives, Ivan Stretovich and Grigory Zyrianov, fared reasonably well, finishing 7th and 8th, and have both gained valuable international experience.  Let's see how they perform in Sunday's event finals.  Full results are given below (link to them at UEG ).

Denis Ablyazin in flight, during his vault at yesterday's qualifying.  Picture by Elena Mikhailova, courtesy of the RGF  The Russian team sits in second place in team qualifying behind the British team after a hot and cold performance on the first day of senior competition at the European Championships in Montpelier.     Five gymnasts selected for their event finals potential provided fans with highlights and lowlights, the highlights including Denis Ablyazin’s highly acrobatic floor routine and dynamic vaulting which currently lead the scoring on these two events.   Also qualified in first place on high bar is Emin Garibov, with Alexander Balandin sitting in second place on rings.    Gympower has caught a video of Ablyazin's floor, and of course I am sceptical.  The tumbling is impressive - such a lot of it, and well performed as far as can be seen.  But is this really gymnastics?  What do you think?  Is this the direction men's floor should take? Of t

Many of you may remember Peter Shilston's work in the 1970s and 1980s for International Gymnast and The Gymnast magazine in the UK.  I know that for many years his articles provided a highlight for me. Peter loves the Soviet gymnasts as much as I do, and has some pictures of his experiences reporting competitions and displays on his blog .    The gymnasts featured include Korbut, Grozdova, Yurchenko, Shaposhnikova, Filatova and many more. Do take some time to explore Peter's blog- there are some good historical essays there, and if you scroll through far enough you will find a very funny story of his visit to the 1981 Moscow World Championships :-)

Anton Golotsutskov will represent Russia once again at the European Championships.  Picture courtesy of the RGF . MAG Europeans begin in the beautiful city of Montpellier in the South of France this week, and the Russians have already arrived.  I wish I could be there. Nominative registrations are available on the UEG site .  The Russian teams are as follows : Senior Denis Ablyazin Emin Garibov David Belyavski Anton Golotsutskov Alexander Balandin This is a strong team with two all arounders (Garibov and Belyavski) and three specialists, a mixture of youth and experience, and very ambitious.  I hope they do well. Juniors Grigori Zyrianov Sergei Stepanov Vladislav Polyashov Ivan Stretovich Kirill Prokopev It will be great to see some videos of these juniors, who have featured recently in international and domestic junior competitions. Juniors start on vault in subdivision 1 on the Wednesday morning; seniors start on high bar in subdivision 2.  The competi

Thanks to Alan who alerted me to this English language radio interview with Head Coach of the Russian team, Andrei Rodionenko. Rodionenko has a lot of thinking to do before the London Olympics.  Picture courtesy of the RGF .  Rodionenko's key points were as follows : For the Russians the Europeans were a control test for a young inexperienced team rather than the endpoint.  Sometimes the Europeans are the most important competition but this time round we have the Olympics in plain view and the main goal was to collect information to help decide what kind of team to take there.   He was h appy to see the Romanian team so good and taking gold. This was not the final team that will go to London; Afanasyeva and Dementyeva were both sick, and in London Mustafina will perform on all four pieces of apparatus.  The fact that she competed on only three pieces in Brussels significantly affected her psychological preparation. Will the team be ready in two months?  Rodionenk

Hard-working Anastasia Grishina was the top Russian senior gymnast of these Championships.  Picture courtesy of the UEG . As a senior team, the Russians obviously did not perform to expectations - even Alexandrov in his interview for Championnat .ru (English language translation here ) admitted as much.  Watching Sidorova, Mustafina and Grishina all make errors in their qualification floor routines was a pretty discouraging experience for a die-hard Russian fan, let alone their long term, long suffering coach.  Then, the shaky start on beam - for which Komova must take as much responsibility as Sidorova - meant they began with a finals deficit that proved impossible to overcome. Hopefully, Alexandrov has a strong heart. In his latest interviews Alexandrov has avoided discussing the likelihood of team success in the London Olympics - almost as though he wants to give the impression that the thought had never occurred to him in the first place.  His strongest verbal commitment is t

You can find a link to PDF files of the results of the competition here .  But here are images of the most important Russian results - and you will find juniors on an earlier post. We also have LaVoix555 to thank for videos of the BBC's live coverage of team finals: Part 1 and Part 2. Still haven't found Part 3 with that amazing bar routine from Mustafina, though ... A disaster for the Russians, particularly on floor where they ended up without an individual representative in the event final.  The further significance of this finish is that the Russians had to start on beam in the team final. A shaky start on beam handicapped Russia, who never caught up with their confident and energetic rivals from Romania. Big girls win vault these days.  Grishina's execution is better than the scores show.

The UEG's website gives a full set of results for the competition, but I'm sufficiently obsessed to provide images of the key ones to the junior Russian gymnasts here.  There will be a separate post of images of the senior results also. Please note, there was no official team competition at this event - however, the winners of this competition (RUS/ITA/ROM) were presented with medals. A close fight in this final with the mature and powerful Scheder ending up in first position following a .3 upgrade of her SV thanks to an appeal from the Germans  - uplifting her finish from bronze to gold. The first of two gold medals for Kharenkova on the final day.  Here she increased her SV from 5.8 in qualifications to 6.1, the highest of any gymnast on any apparatus in the whole of the junior competition. Kharenkova's floor was the routine of the competition for me, both senior and junior.  Even with a .1 penalty for going out of the area she looked by far the b

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A surprisingly happy team at Brussels ... Anastasia Sidorova, Maria Paseka, Viktoria Komova, Aliya Mustafina, Anastasia Grishina Of course, the main story of this week’s WAG European Championships has been the resurgence of the Romanian team as a dominant force in world gymnastics.  Of the five gold medals available here, Romania took four.   Three out of their five gymnasts have gone home with individual gold medals, and the team underlined their strength on beam and floor where they also took silver.  The only apparatus on which they did not excel was bars, Russia’s particular eyrie of the past few years, where we even had a flashback moment with a clean sweep from the republics of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Russia, Ukraine).    With China and the USA on a similar level,  the FIG will have some worrying moments in London if they want to give the impression that the sport has a wider geographical spread of excellence than in former years. Only Germany, Switzerland, Ukra

Don't miss these start lists for tomorrow's battle, which begins at 3.00 pm Brussels time.  I will be there. Russia's working order currently remains unchanged from Thursday's qualifications, so obviously the girls are expected to make amends for their rather shaky performances.  I hope they can at least regain some confidence. In fact - let's hope that all the teams perform to their best!  Good luck, girls! Link to the start list here.

Evgeniya Shelgunova, second placed in tonight's Junior Europeans All Around competition.  Picture courtesy of the RGF. A good competition today, with our two Russians performing well to expectation.  Shelgunova was extremely happy to land her full twisting Yurchenko after Wednesday's disappointment (two crashed vaults left her out of the running in theoretically one of her best events) and went on to complete her bars efficiently (a couple of form breaks but a good double layout dismount).  She also delivered strong routines on beam and floor where she looked very solid on both days.  Italy's Enus Mariani competed to her predicted form and took gold, just over a point ahead of Shelgunova and third placed Romanian Andreea Munteanu. I shall reserve a small gasp of delight for the second placed Russian on the team : Maria Kharenkova really performed tonight and finished in sixth place; is it academic that she missed 5th by only .067 of a mark?  What is less academic is

First year senior Anastasia Grishina is the Russian team's leading all around gymnast at these Championships.  Picture by kind permission of the RGF . I have to give credit to Romania today - they recalled Romanian teams of the past and performed with confidence and energy to beat Russia to first place in qualifications.  Ioana Iordache leads the unofficial all around with a display of light and precise acrobatics that must position her as a favourite for the individual Olympic title if she can reproduce her form of today once more, on that much anticipated July day in London. This was a strong, perhaps the strongest possible, Romanian team, drawing on Olympic champions past and, maybe, future.  As I had predicted, Iszbasa, Ponor, Iordache, Bulimar and Haidu pulled out all the stops to give their best and take first place against a somewhat below-power Russian team.  It remains to be seen whether the Russians can turn their form around in two days flat and contend for gold

There are some unexpected recurring themes in my gymnastics holidays: bad food, inappropriate men, funny friends and brilliant Russians.  As this is a diary of my Brussels experience as much as a story about the European Championships, I will provide you with an update of how Tracey and I are getting on here, as well as some links to interesting information about today's junior team competition, which the Russians won quite brilliantly. First of all, let me show you a picture. Snack acquired at Le Roy d'Espagne, Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium Let me take my earlier statement a little further, and propose the hypothesis that bad food and inappropriate men precede brilliant Russians.  We first established this possible link in Stuttgart, when an order of lasagne turned out to be the worst culinary disaster of our lifetime.  (I have never had to carve pasta before or since.)  Secondly, in Athens, a self-described 'very bold, very audacious' Georgian gentleman promi