Skip to main content

Russia Cup 2013 - 17th to 21st August


Russia Cup will be a qualifying competition for the Russian MAG and WAG teams for the Antwerp World Championships, due to take place late in September.  Gymnasts pre-selected for the team due to their participation in Europeans and the Universiade will not be required to compete, so we will not be seeing Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Denis Ablyazin, Nikolai Kuksenkov, Emin Garibov and David Belyavski.  This seems a good strategy designed to protect these gymnasts from over exposure.

There are strong rumours on the internet that Viktoria Komova will not appear here.  This would have been Vika's first major competitive appearance in over a year, and her only real opportunity to test herself before Worlds, so is disappointing and a little worrying.  There is no official news from the RGF about it so, for now at least, we can only speculate and hope that things turn out for the best by the World Championships. In Komova's absence, Anastasia Grishina must be front runner for the WAG all around title.  The men's competition will be enriched by the participation of local Penza favourites Pavel Russinyak and Pavel Pavlov.

It is not easy to access information about these Russian domestic competitions.  RRG will try to find the best sources and provide links and updates as they become available.  Individual and qualification competitions take place tomorrow for both MAG and WAG; WAG team competition on Sunday, MAG team competition Monday, with event finals taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday.  There will be live online streaming of Event Finals only, accessible on the RGF website.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics

Svetlana Boginskaya, 15 years old, with her medals from the Seoul Olympics Nico translates the latest interview with gymnastics legend Svetlana Boginskaya, during a recent visit to her home country of Belarus. Svetlana Boginskaya: I was always a bitch* in gymnastics, so now I ask for forgiveness from everyone who came in contact with me. The National Olympic Committee of Belarus held a press conference with three-time Olympic Champion in artistic gymnastics, Svetlana Boginskaya. The meeting was devoted to the 25th anniversary of the Olympic Games in Seoul. In South Korea the Belarussian won two gold medals in the team competition and vault. As a gift to the Olympic Hall of fame, the famous gymnast, now living in the United States, donated one of her trophies that she won at the 1990 European Championships and a pennant for Best Female Athlete of the USSR in 1989. How happy we were when we could share with such stars as Boginskaya, Scherbo, and Ivankov,...

Our Nelli Kim : a new documentary

Nelli Kim at the 1980 Olympics, courtesy of Nellikim.net I have mixed feelings about Nelli Kim.  She was certainly one of the most talented competitors the Soviet Union fielded in gymnastics, and that is saying something. She harvested first place  all around at the 1979 World Championships, her country's only gold medal in a somewhat disastrous competition for the Soviet women.  (That competition has become a very notorious one in history, if one remembers poor Nadia Comaneci's brave performance despite a serious wrist infection, and the winning Romanian team's sickeningly unhealthy appearance in Fort Worth.) Nelli was also a great performer and character.  Her career overlapped a time of fundamental change in the sport - when the lyricism of such performers as Tourischeva was overpowered by the pyrotechnical advances of the likes of Comaneci.  Nelli managed to reconcile the two qualities, and to span the gap between the two eras.  I don't think she ever r...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more