What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger – WAG Europeans 2012

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, Ukraine and Britain made their way onto the podium at all, with the minor individual medals shared by four gymnasts.   This was the least diverse championships of many years in terms of the distribution of wins. 

For Russia these Championships could not exactly be called an outstanding success, but the fascination for me lies in the way in which the team used a major international tournament as a way of tempering the competitive steel of their unusual mix of talent, experience and youth.  Of the five members of the team, three (Paseka, Sidorova, Grishina) were making their debut at senior international level in a major championships.  There was one past all around world champion (Mustafina) and another vice world champion (Komova).    Two (Sidorova, Paseka) have not been seen in senior international competition at all barring a couple of minor events.   Three (Komova, Mustafina, Sidorova) were coming back from serious injuries.    Two world champions (Afanasyeva, Nabieva) were left at home.    It would be difficult to find a more aspiring, less predictable team in world gymnastics.

The medal count was probably not what the Russians had expected, although one expects that the results they did achieve will be less important in the long run than the learning acquired, physical, mental and emotional.  If the Russians’ point was to give their young, inexperienced hands a taste of the vagaries of tough international competition, they succeeded handsomely.   Starting on beam during the qualification round could be planned for, but what could not be predicted was the death sequence of three meltdowns on floor.  The team’s muted response on vault was followed by the shock of Mustafina’s poor performance on bars.  Qualifications must have left the team feeling utterly drained, and Mustafina questioning whether her world champion form had deserted her forever.  First dip in the Europeans roller coaster.

The team then found themselves with a beam start once more in finals, and in a deficit position before they had hardly begun when first up, young Sidorova hopped off the apparatus.  In the end, this small slip cost the team a gold medal that might have transformed the whole feel of the competition.     The Russians pulled together an acceptable floor round, but it was only after vault that the old energy returned and Mustafina finally began to smile again.  Finishing with three magnificent bars sets might have given the Russians the edge, but the strength of the Romanians on vault, beam and floor proved enough to overhaul an unbalanced team performance.  The rollercoaster ride never really reached its peak, and the Russian girls will have to wait a little longer and pull a little harder next time round if they want a more satisfying end.

This team selection was an intriguing strategy for the Russian coaches to pursue, if it was a choice at all, and the conduct of the competition itself was far from usual. This was the first major international at which I have observed Alexandrov take no visible role on the floor.   His absence forced gymnasts to take responsibility for their performances, with Mustafina and Grishina emerging as moral leaders.  Fledgling gymnasts were required to learn to fly at all costs.  Or, were they working with their daily coaches on a learning journey that was as vital as anything going on in the gym back home in Moscow?  

Perhaps Alexandrov simply decided to make a virtue out of necessity: with Afanasyeva and Nabieva out of the picture, he had to try out young blood.  A couple of lightly injured veterans also provided a convenient route to damage limitation.  More was demanded of the gymnasts than taking home an empty gold, silver or worse.  The outcome includes rival team PR machines and the gymternet left in a state of perpetual questioning that will be impossible to answer until it’s all too late.  The results do not show the weight of what the Russians learned here.  Much was gained that was not made of metal.

If I had to say something helpful to the team, it would be: what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

More will follow soon on both junior and senior competitions, and you can find a photograph album of Elena Mikhailova's lovely photographs, courtesy of the RGF, on RRG's Facebook page.