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| Courtesy of the RGF |
Aliya Mustafina successfully defended her national title today with a convincing, if not totally faultless, display, showing herself to be preparing well for the coming internationals. She also led her Moscow team to a strong first position in the qualifying for team final, later this week.
Aliya has now matched the illustrious Svetlana Khorkina for the number of national all around titles she has won (previously 2009, 2012 and 2013) although Khorkina's career wins were accured over a longer period of time - 1993, 1995, 1997, and 2002. Looking fit and more energetic than at any period of last year, Mustafina shows much promise for the coming year if she can build on her early year training and continue to develop. She looked especially strong on beam and floor, but suffered a deduction on bars, where she competed her 2011 routine but suffered a deduction when she hit a landing mat with her feet.
Mustafina's Moscow team mates Alla Sosnitskaya followed her closely into second place all around, and Anastasia Grishina, who performed mostly watered down routines and didn't look very happy, managed to win the bronze medal.
We were rewarded for our patience with a good performance from Viktoria Komova on the bars, but a fall from beam will have dampened the excitement of her return to competition somewhat. She competed three pieces, no floor exercise at this moment in time. Ksenia Afanasyeva performed well on her only piece, vault, contributing 14.933 to her team's score (Maria Paseka managed to achieve the highest mark on vault). There were some high scores on bars from unexpected places, in particular Moscow's Daria Spiridinova (15.133) who leads qualification for this apparatus ahead of Anna Rodionova and Viktoria Komova. Mustafina leads qualifications on beam with a 15.4, by far the highest score, and also is ahead on floor, with a 15.1, closely followed by Sosnitskaya.
Young Maria Kharenkova competed only on bars and beam and had a mediocre competition today, by her own standards. She has I think qualified to beam final so perhaps will be able to pull out a good result on Sunday in the event finals.
The full results are available (in Russian) here.
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| Sosnitskaya, Mustafina, Grishina - three champions from Moscow |
There are already some videos available.
Albert from the All Around has uploaded the entire live stream of subdivision 2 onto Youtube.
Aliya Mustafina floor
Aliya Mustafina beam
Viktoria Komova bars
15.400 on beam....hhmmmm. I guess she was overscored.
ReplyDeleteShe was overscored IMHO on beam and floor. There's no breakdown at the moment but there are for the juniors yesterday and some of the E-scores were veeeery generous - even if the routines have no obvious mistakes no international judges are giving out 9+ E-scores on any event but vault, but the top juniors were being given them. That said Aliya is capable of a much higher score than that on bars, so even if she is being gifted on the other events I'd say her actual AA capacity is probably only half a point or so lower (they have her a 59.5-ish today).
DeleteMustafina went for full difficulty on beam. I would say she deserved full connection credit on the switch leap w/ 1/2 turn + onodi + double turn, but not the free walkover + free walkover + back handspring series. I'm guessing they gave her 6.4 D with 9.0 execution. If she gets the sissone+side somi and connects the leap series to the side aerial, she'll start at 6.6.
DeleteOn floor, they must have given her the triple Y turn and the gomez, otherwise she would have had a much lower score (you can't count the memmel twice for instance). I have to say, without music, I liked her new floor which already incorporates the new rules. Interesting choice to do only three passes and concentrate on those spins (super beautiful spins). I got 6.1 for her routine (so 9.00 E again). Her bars were 5.8 (8.533 E).
I've seen her beam routine and her floor routine. No way they deserved 9 on execution.
Deleteon the beam she had wobbles at the beginning and didn't connect the free walkover+free walkover+back handspring.
The floor...I'm not that impressed with her routine, but the spins were good. I've got the impression that she was tired and needed to rest.
I don't understand why they didn't let her to rest till october. She really needed this rest. A month won't do that much.
As I am impressed by the fact that after one month rest, she still is unbeatable ( but those scores weren't fair), I'm worried that gymnasts that didn't rest are .... sloppy. Anyway congrats to her and Grishina. And also to Alla. They were good.
But I still think Aliya needs to rest.
She didn't want to rest. It was her choice to compete.
DeleteAfan's second vault was a bit of a flub, if what I saw was indeed her (and I'm fairly sure it was) - a half-on piked front off to her butt. I expect she hasn't had much time to train it and the quality of her DTY suggests she's getting her strength back well, but I don't know how the 'Afan-as-VT-specialist' plan will play out this year.
ReplyDeleteTbh it's hard to tell much from Russian nats though - if a girl has a really good day then of course that's positive, but a bad day doesn't tell you a lot. Grishy's floor and beam scores were promising (Aliya's floor score is a little crazy though? She must be getting a LOT of D-score from those leaps and spins, because I don't see how she got a 15.100 with only 3 passes, and the middle one a bit of a mess and no whips into the arabian like worlds ...).
I think Mustafina had a 6.1.
DeleteDouble arabian (E) + Stag jump (A): 0.1
Triple Y turn (E)
2 1/2 twist (D) + Front twist (C): 0.2
Gomez (E)
Switch leap 1/2 (C)
Double tucked (D)
Memmel (D)
Split leap (A) + Switch leap (B)
CR (2.5) + CV (0.3) + DV (E, E, E, D, D, D, C, C) = 6.1
I agree, this is what I got as well. It's an interesting choice to compete the memmel and the triple Y in the same program. The risk is missing the triple and losing a D skill if counting it twice. The benefit is she can go the triple a second time if she knows she missed it the first go around. She could reduce the risk if she turns part of leap series into a C leap - if she can make a 1/1 split leap or switch ring leap.
DeleteI expect she'll add the whip series back into her routine based on the long pause after the arabian for +0.2 (6.3)
Do you think she's only doing three passes so she can really hit those difficult spins?
Well... I feel that it's risky, but I love to see a gymnast who's able to achieve such a high D score with difficult and original spins instead of doing lots of tumbles. Also, doing three passes gives her time to show her beautiful artistry and choreography.
DeleteI agree again, I really enjoyed her routine and can't wait to hear the music that goes with it. I suspect her potential SV will increase later in the competitive year through acrobatics. I can see her routine turn into:
Delete"whip+whip indirect" double arabian stag, triple Y turn, 5/2 twist+1/1 twist, gomez, memmel, 1/2 switch, "triple full dismount", split leap+"C leap" for 6.4 difficulty. (The C leap is 0.1 assurance if the D panel credits her for two memmel turns)
I'm another anonymous... I believe the triple should NOT return, I thinks this routine is a very clever choice for her, she gains D-score through the spins (difficult and beautiful). The tumbles are fine. It is a risk, but a calculated risk...
DeleteWith the whip series her D-score would be 6.3, if she misses the gomez 6.1, and if she misses the triple Y twice and gets credit only for a memmel and adds the C-leap as a back up (which I think she will, beautiful Switch Ring probably), her D-score would be 5.9, which is still competitive (2012 Olympics D-score)...
And this is still competitive because of her E-score, without the triple twist she saves about 5 tenths (that triple really hurt her) and that boosts her total score, and with a clean routine she could get a 9+ E-score (the 2.5 twist hurts her a lot too) and that would be a consistantly 15.0 ish score with a 5.9 D-score and if she hit the 6.3 could be massive with only three passes (which also helps stamina wise, not that she needed to, and let her do more choreo), and I also think she should try to connect the memmel turn with another turn like she has tried to before...
And that routine looks stunning without sound by the way... Don't think she would get artistry deductions (it those really exist because I didn't see them being applied last year)...
Eh, no one is getting 9s in E-scores on FX internationally. I think you can count on a 5.9 D-score, no matter how well performed, coming in the high 14s at best. In terms of AA potential, that would put Mustafina at a real deficit in D-score, especially with the DTY. So the potential for the Triple Y to be downgraded to a Memmel is a real concern for me.
DeleteKsenia Afanasyeva scored a 13.000 on FX too, which is probably far from ready and severely watered down, but mostly just for practice of the new choreo.
ReplyDeleteAs always some of these scores are gifted, but at the same time Aliya hasn't really performed to her best so once she does, she will probably score closer to what she has today, internationally. Right now I think she wouldn't get more than a high 57, but she can still improve and add connections, like on beam where she missed one, the floppy dty, the mistakes on bars, and a neater floor. I'm glad she has a routine with 3 passes though! She's much better at turns and leaps nowadays.