Denis Ablyazin leads on two events – MAG Europeans

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 the five gymnasts on the team, four have qualified to finals (Golotsutskov will appear in the vault).  Russia will not, however,  be represented on pommel horse or parallel bar finals.   A significant lowlight was indeed pommels, where Golotsutskov scored in the 11s, and Russia do not appear to have improved much on this apparatus.

No Russian appeared in the unofficial all around competition which Britain’s Daniel Purvis leads.   David Belyavski, often amongst the leaders in individual competition, was disappointing yesterday, did not compete all six apparatus and failed to make any event finals.  This leaves him with the opportunity of Saturday’s team final  to prove himself to the Olympic selectors.

Russia still have significant room for improvement in the final, but then so do all of the top four teams (including Britain, Germany and France,who have a home advantage).  Russia will have to find consistency if they are to rival for medals on Saturday; hopefully Belyavski will be able to pull out his best form and make the chase interesting.

Full results can be found at the UEG’s website, and summary images are provided below for ease of reference.  The Russian Gymnastics Federation also now has a gallery of pictures from MAG Europeans including both junior and senior competitions, and the UEG is posting highlight videos relatively rapidly on its Youtube channel.

The competition continues this afternoon at 3 pm French time (2 pm in the UK) with the junior all around competition, where Russia's Grigory Zyrianov is expected to compete for a medal.