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| Maria Kharenkova in Penza yesterday |
Russia's Maria Kharenkova continued collecting gold at yesterday's Olympic Hopes international in Penza, winning first place in all three of her elected event finals: vault, beam and floor. On floor, Maria eliminated her errors from the previous day, nailing her Arabian double and connecting the 1.5 twist to stag leap she had missed in the all around. She thus upgraded her mark here to 14.575. On beam, she fell to her knees on a double pike dismount but her positive execution elsewhere earned her 14.375, almost a point ahead of the nearest competition, her compatriot Anastasia Dmitrieva (13.425)
Russia took gold and silver on every piece except floor, where the silver medal went to Ekaterina Chuykina from Kazakhstan (13.425).
Maria intrigues me - a strong and acrobatic gymnast who is also clearly a fierce competitor and really enjoys her work, yet it's difficult to find a picture of her smiling fulsomely about her many gold medals. That doesn't mean she is not expressive - I'm still mesmerised by her floor routine, which you can see a video of here, with overdubbed music thanks to Lylaha, who took the trouble of recording some of the livestream onto her mobile phone and then transferring it to her Youtube channel (thanks to Albert at the All Around).
After the competition, presumably, Maria took time for a little rest, here with a lady who I guess is her mum, judging by the eyes and the set of the mouth :-)
Results can be found here and below, and a photo gallery here. Pictures courtesy of the RGF.
Vault
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Hmm, I guess she is one of the juniors to watch. It's nice that they have a few juniors coming up because senior needs depth. It seems to me that she isn't that good on UB like other Russians, which is fine because they should have enough bar workers.
ReplyDeleteAs for her not smiling, eh. Majority of Russians don't. It's really only this year you see Musty smiling more, and I even think that won't last long, lol.
But Maria is mile a lot ! Maybe on competitions she is too serious on doing her job but after that she is very sunny person
DeletePossibly, she seems to have a little smile on the podium. They tend to be serious during competition which is fine with me as I prefer that.
DeleteMajority of them are sunny outside of competition. They had done something on gymnasts where they were interviewing Mustafina and Komova and they said Mustafina is the serious one even in practice (she keeps things inside), and Komova is the sunny one.
However, I am sure outside of the gym completely when they are hanging with friends, they show a different personality.
I think Maria's sunny personality comes across very strongly in her floor routine.
DeleteLove her!!