Skip to main content

Results, start lists, Rodionova, Balandin

Russia's MAG didn't have the greatest qualifications yesterday, with Ablyazin, Garibov, and Kuksenkov all failing to make their individual event finals. It was that kind of day for lots of gymnasts. For example, the whole world gasped as pommel horse specialist Kristian Berki took a fall and missed out on his expected place in Saturday's final. Gymnasts such as Britain's Daniel Keatings and Ukraine's Oleg Vernaiev and Igor Radivilov all took disappointments.

It is the job of gymnasts to put their necks on the line and perform their best when the green light shines. Gymnastics, more than any other sport, is brutally efficient at weeding out those who are unready for those vital few minutes of performance, either mentally or physically. And sometimes gymnasts just have a bit of bad luck.

Nevertheless, there is some light on the horizon as Alexander Balandin qualified to rings final, showing his newly accredited element and some great style. He is in fourth position at the end of qualifying. Newcomer to the Russian team, Mattvei Petrov, also qualified to pommel horse in 6th position.

Russia's only all arounder, David Belyavski, qualified to the all around in 14th position. It was a difficult day for him. I have read that his injured foot was very painful; he was unable to perform his full programme of difficulty and made many mistakes. Japan's Kohei Uchimura was utterly dominant and is expected to take the gold barring major errors.

You can navigate the men's scores from here.

The women's qualifying is still underway, resuming this afternoon at 1.30 pm Antwerp time with subdivision 3, which includes Tanya Nabieva and Simone Biles. Russia's WAG team will be building on the performances of young Anna Rodionova, who was quite the breath of fresh air at this competition yesterday and must surely be in contention for the Longines Prize for Elegance. She has set an all around score of 54.599, which will be a target for Nabieva if she competes four apparatus (and there is some doubt about this after Tanya suffered an accident in training which has left her with a huge bruise in the middle of her forehead).

Anna's score on beam of 14.466 also puts her in very strong contention for a place in Sunday's beam final. How nice to see a Russian gymnast perform with confidence on this piece and there is much room for improvement in her D score if she can connect some of the elements shown yesterday without error.

If you aren't in America and so cannot follow the live streaming which is on USA Gymnastics Youtube channel, you can follow live scoring at the FIG website. Start lists for the WAG qualifying are here.

The FIG is updating its Youtube channel regularly with some great quality videos of routines from qualifying so I would keep this open as you follow live scoring this afternoon. In the meantime, I will leave you with two happy moments from Russia so far.

Anna Rodionova Beam, Qualifying, 14.466



Alexander Balandin, Rings, Qualifying, 15.6



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Vladimir Zaglada - coach, author, friend, father

It is with great sadness that I report here the sudden and completely unexpected death, on 5th October, of our friend Vladimir Zaglada.  I send my love and condolences to his daughter, Olesya.  My thoughts are with the whole family.   Vladimir was born in Lvov, Ukraine, in November 1944.  His father was a progressive lawyer of great courage who was known to defend those who challenged the Soviet authorities.  Vladimir trained as a sports acrobat under the developing Soviet sports system, working in the same club as Olympic champion Viktor Chukarin.  After moving to Moscow, he became a leading coach of women's gymnastics, supporting the development of high level acrobatics.  He worked particularly closely with the up and coming young gymnasts of the early 1980s - you can see him at work in the video 'You in Gymnastics'.  At the national training centre, Lake Krugloye, he worked with Filatova, Mostepanova, Yurchenko, Arzhannikova, Mukhina and more.   Around the mid 1980s Vlad

Who really won the WAG All Around?

You will find a link to the FIG's newly published book of results at the Olympic Games here .  This year, they have broken down the judge's execution scores so you can see exactly how each judge evaluated the gymnasts' performances.  It makes for interesting reading - if only I had more time to analyse each judge's marking.  A skim reading already highlights multiple inconsistencies in individual judges' marks and makes you wonder why they bother with the jury at all. I have taken the time to look at the reference judges' scores for the top four in the women's all around.  The FIG explains here what their role is, and how they are selected.  I even used my calculator, which is a risky thing in my hands.  My, how I wish we could have seen a similar document for the Tokyo World Championships. I wonder if anyone can explain how, if the FIG's Code of Points is so objective and fair, it is possible to come up with two different results using two differ

Natalia Yurchenko - an exclusive interview

Natalia wins gold at the World Championships in Budapest, 1983 1983 World Champion Natalia Yurchenko speaks directly to readers of RRG in this exclusive interview.    Early years: In the summer of 1976, at the age of 11, I was accepted to a sports boarding school in Rostov-on-Don. I remember it was a 4-level building with the cafeteria on the first floor, academic classrooms on the second floor, rooms for girls on the third floor and rooms for boys on the fourth floor. There was one TV on the ground floor and the kids who stayed at school over the summer (about 20-30 kids), were able to watch the Olympics. Nadia Comaneci’s outstanding performance made us feel jealous because usually the Soviets were the unbeatable favorites. We did feel some relief with amazing performances from Nellie Kim and Ludmilla Tourischeva. Besides Ludmilla, there was a gymnast from Rostov-on-Don, Svetlana Grozdova! And, we were really thrilled to see the very little and cute Maria Filatova. B

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more