Skip to main content

Russian gymnastics teams for London 2012 are announced

Image
By
Komova, Nabieva, Mustafina, Inshina, Afanasyeva - all included in the team selection for the London Olympics


Head National Coach Andrei Rodionenko on Sunday announced the names of those gymnasts who will be preparing for the forthcoming Olympic Games in London (reports Eurosport).  The gymnasts were selected according to three criteria :

  1. Results at the Russian Championship, European Championship and Russia Cup. 
  2. How the gymnasts had implemented their routines, and their compliance with 'model characteristics', complexity and quality of execution.  
  3. Moral, strong-willed and feisty qualities at the highest levels of competition

WAG : Ksenia Afanasyeva, Victoria Komova, Aliya Mustafina, Anastasia Grishina, Tatiana Nabieva, Maria Paseka, Anastasia Sidorova and Yulia Inshina

MAG : Denis Ablyazin, Alexander Balandin, David Belyavsky, Emin Garibov, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, Nikita Ignatyev, Sergey Khorokhordin, Igor Pakhomenko 

Of the eight gymnasts selected for each discipline, only five will appear at the Olympic Games, with four competing on each apparatus in the qualifications stage.  

The WAG selection controversially omits 2011 European Champion Anna Dementieva, a strong beam worker and all around competitor, who has suffered a rocky competitive programme since last spring.  Dementieva has suffered injury and illness since, and it seems likely that her consistently poor performance in criteria 1 and 3 has, sadly, led her to lose out on this occasion.  

The MAG selection is noteable for the exclusion of vault and floor specialist Anton Golotsutskov, who unfortunately is suffering from a back injury and in hospital, and was unable to compete at the Russia Cup.  It is expected that Golotsutkov will retire imminently.  Former Russian Olympian and European Champion Maxim Devyatovski has also retired following a year of training independently at his home gym in Siberia.  This was presaged by his non-appearance at the Russia Cup.  

Thus Russia goes forward to London with only three experienced Olympians on their training squads - for the women, Ksenia Afanasyeva, for the men, Konstantin Pluzhnikov and Sergei Khorokhodin.   This is not unusual for gymnastics, a sport where youth appears to have a distinct advantage.


Good luck to all the gymnasts - I wish them the very best on their way to the Olympic podium!


Picture courtesy of the RGF.
Labels:

Comments

  1. M20 June 2012 at 20:36

    Yeah disappointed for Dementyeva but if she suffers from injury and illness, then makes no sense to take her. Still would have preferred her to be on the training squad at least.

    As for criteria number 3, the only one who fits all of that is Mustafina and Ksenia. The others crumble at times.

    However, I have faith that all will be well at Olympics.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who will travel to Berne? A Russian mystery

By
Aliya Mustafina and team candidate Seda Tutkhalyan - both from Moscow Five days left before the MAG European Championships open in Switzerland, and Russian gymnast Nikita Nagorny is posting videos of himself practicing a full twisting Roche vault - I wonder if he will compete it in Berne?  The men's team seems fairly well prepared and ready to travel as announced some weeks ago - Kuksenkov, Belyavski, Ignatyev, Nagorny, Ablyazin.  But the composition of the women's team, who will travel to their first major competition of 2016 next week, seems somewhat undecided.  Will Natalia Kapitonova make her major senior debut in June, or will Seda Tutkhalyan, her dynamic yet unpredictable rival, grace Russia's team?  Or will other gymnasts be brought into play; will further, unexpected, changes be made? If head coach Valentina Rodionenko's recent announcement is to be believed, it is a simple case of replacing the injured Maria Paseka (a vault specialist) with Natalia ...
22 comments
Read more

Alexander Alexandrov - some better translations and additions

By
Isa Alexandrova has kindly translated Alexander's interview word for word.  It gives a  different emphasis in some places to my summary, and adds some more information, so I wanted readers to have access to this right away.  With many thanks to Isa. 1) Alexander didn't quite imply that he is ready to come back to Russia by the end of this year if there is an offer. He said that "it is still hurtful for me to think the way I was treated in 2012. However, enough time had passed, that I was able to better analyze the situation, and I understand that perhaps I did some things not the best way. At that time, I was working for the "final result" and did not pay attention to much else. Mutko and I had a conversation before I left, where he let me know that he didn't want me to leave. Now, the only way I could talk about my coming back is when and if he calls me. I am not going to invite myself back. I am ready to come back to Russia if I am wanted, but I do...
20 comments
Read more

Nelli Kim - 'Russian gymnastics has closed in on itself' - Lupita translates

By
Lupita has translated this ITAR-TASS interview with Nelli Kim.  It's controversial, to say the least. Ed's note : much of the initial response to this interview - both here and in the wider gymternet -  has focussed on the detail of Kim's words and especially her comments about Viktoria Komova, and smiling.  But I think these have to be taken in context, and not too literally. Don't forget that just a day ago Andrei Rodionenko complained bitterly about the judging in Antwerp, calling Kim's behaviour 'aggressive'. Kim is responding to this here, and to the wider current context of Russian gymnastics.  What she is essentially saying to the Russian coach is 'get your own house in order, produce confident, disciplined, well trained gymnasts - stop complaining, do your job, and I will do mine.'   She goes about saying this in a somewhat long winded way and says some things along the way that seem contradictory, unfair, inappropriate even for th...
30 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more