Russia's young guns held their ground and performed mostly well today to secure a third place spot in Saturday's team final, and gymnasts in every event final on Sunday. Ahead of them were an inspired British team who had their best competition today, and a strong but occasionally faltering Romanian team, led by the impressive Larissa Iordache who won the 'unofficial all around' with a near faultless display. Switzerland's Giulia Steingrueber repeated her good performance at last year's Euros to come in second. As this is a team and event Championships, Russia did not field an all around gymnast.
Highlights for the Russian team were bars and beam, with scores in the 15s from Mustafina (bars) and Kharenkova (beam). Kharenkova's almost faultless beam set was delivered under pressure in the anchor spot, and came after a brave exercise from World Champion Mustafina, who completed her first double back dismount off the apparatus for the first time in weeks. Emotions ran high in this part of South East London; could this be considered to be Mustafina's Comaneci 1979 moment? Russia will begin on bars and finish on vault in the final. Will Mustafina risk her all on a DTY for the sake of a team medal? If so I think the tears will flow, hopefully for the right reasons.
I am not expecting Russia to win gold on Saturday, but the team gelled, and did some good work. If they repeat this performance on Saturday, a medal should be the reward. Sosnitskaya delivered reliable floor and vaults and Spiridonova and Rodionova made their mark on bars. Kharenkova has staked her claim as a leading gymnast on the team, and hopefully she'll continue in the same vein for the rest of the week and year. The few small errors - notably Spiridonova on floor and a wobbly beam from Mustafina - were to be expected and may well be put right in the final. Overall, though, the team worked together well and show some significant promise for the future.
We should also congratulate both the British and Romanian teams, who were clearly in the lead today!
Good luck once again, keep up the good work!
Aliya on bars http://youtu.be/xlawmkG0mBs
Alla on floor http://youtu.be/rtAbXKfJqPw
Maria on beam http://youtu.be/eM6WOY0u7Ls
Pictures courtesy of the organisers' Facebook page
A pity you didn't mention Pavlova.
ReplyDeleteShe is Russian too.
She made the final in spite of injuries and war with the Russian Federation.
Pavlova now competes for Azerbaijan. You will find a mention of her on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteThat's right but, Pavlova now represent another federation and even though the Russian federation has a lot of problems with their gymnasts (former gymnasts) which is shouldn't be ignored. There is nothing wrong to focus on the new generations, as the saying goes THE LIVE GOES ON. And if you ever read in the previous articles on this blog you could see that a lot of stuff have been mentioned including Pavlovas one. Never forget the past but lets cheers on the future, lets hope that they could build a new fresh/dynamic/solid/powerful and beautiful team without solely relaying on one or two leading gymnast. ASAP to Pavlova's come back.
ReplyDeleteI was very happy with the performance of Mary Kharenkova. I think she secured her place among the senior. Difficulty, consistency and maturity in execution. Alyia is Alyia, my favorite gymnast, and I believe that tomorrow she will do whatever it takes to win medals and helping the team. he mistakes made during the execution of today, I think it is due to inexperience of the gymnasts, who starred as a senior this year. Tomorrow is another day, like say Mustafina.
ReplyDeleteIt is only me or Spiridonova and Rodionova had the same UB routine?
ReplyDeleteI just want to know why Spiridonova's routines on UB and FX have been downgraded than her routines on the Russian Championships, I mean she had D 6.4 and 5.3 but today she performed 6.3 and 4.9 ...
ReplyDeleteand not only her but also Sosnitskaya on FX from 5.9 to 5.7
Any reason?
The reason Daria's d-score on uneven bars dropped by .1 is because she didn't connect her in-bar stalder 1/2 or 1/1 to her Komova II. She added a toe on handstand in between those two elements and thus lost the connection. I think she didn't think she was going to be able to make it, but will probably try and connect it in team final.
DeleteI'm not sure why their d-scores dropped on floor but it was probably because they didn't complete their spins, dropped the heal to early etc.
Nice by the newbies. Floor was not good, but they are getting the experience and are doing really well so far. Let's see how they perform in the finals.
ReplyDeleteI doubt Aliya will be doing beam final. Nice about Kharenkova's beam, she was only 0.1 away from Iordache.
Good luck to them and everyone in the finals.