Angelina Melnikova ... Top scorer in the Russia Cup AA competition today. Daria Spiridonova in second place was the leading senior in the field, followed by Maria Kharenkova. Seda Tutkhakyan in 4th had a fall on floor but would otherwise have finished top. As Melnikova is junior, this probably means that Spiridonova is Russia Cup AA champion! An unexpected but well deserved title for this distinctive and well prepared gymnast. Well done Dasha! congratulations to all the girls - will publish results as soon as they are available.
'Should Mustafina compete in Glasgow, considering her fragile state of health? - aren't the Olympics more important?' are the key themes of this brief news piece by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, a top sports journalist who has interviewed Alexandrov, Arkayev, Starkin, Mustafina and Rodionenko in the last five years since Aliya won the World Championships. Elena stresses that this year nothing unusual has happened. Aliya has worked hard with her new coach Sergei Starkin. She did a 'great job', demonstrating her work at the European Games in Baku where she won the all around, bars and team events as well as silver in the floor exercise. But, says Vaitsekhovskaya, more important than the medals was the fact that Aliya showed a new technical level, began work on upgrades for the Rio Olympics. Just competing in one event - the Baku games - could be enough for a veteran athlete of Mustafina's experience. The body ages in both time - and injuries. Athletes always respond...

I do believe that Melnikova, Skrypnik will diminish the chances of some of these seniors in the next Olympics year ...
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I do believe that Melnikova and Skrypinik should go to Rio.
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