Skip to main content

Mustafina 'unlikely' to compete at Russian nationals

By

Valentina Rodionenko has told TASS news agency that it is unlikely that Aliya will compete at Russian nationals in April.  The Championships had been planned as the Olympic Champion's return to competition following knee surgery, but she is not yet fully ready, and it seems that more recovery time is necessary.  Her last competition was the European Games in Baku, last June.

If this turns out to be true, it isn't the end of the world.  Aliya herself would most probably say that she herself just doesn't know as yet whether she will compete.  

Besides, there are plenty more competitions for Aliya in the coming months!  

By the way, congratulations are due to the Russian team, who won today's DTB Team Challenge with some very convincing performances, and to Nikolai Kuksenkov who won a bronze medal in the DTB Cup!
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous22 March 2016 at 03:59

    I hope she can compete 2x before the olympics this season. Even though she has loads of experience, even she needs more than just 1-2 competitions in the last 2 years leading up to the olympics to try out new skills and no combos etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous23 March 2016 at 18:11

      I agree with you. She needs more competitions to keep herself motivated and get familiar with the feelings. In my opinion, she should have competed in the 2015 Worlds at least.

      Her European Game floor was a warning sign for me. She never found an ideal approach to perform the turn combination (and I believe it was the balance loss took away her Floor Gold). And even she won the AA Gold, the score wouldn't even allow her to medal in Glasgow.

      I really have a feeling that Aliya is shunning away from competitions nowadays. When Khorkina was at her age, Khorkina was still competing annually, and went on to win the 2003 All-around, and Khorkina was already over 23 then.

      Personally I would want to see Aliya win at least one team and one individual medal in Rio. But somehow, I fear that she might just have a dim hope for the team medal (a bit like Boginskaya in Barcelona, but hey, Boginskaya went on to take 1996 European AA silver medal at the age of 23!).

      Delete
    2. Anonymous24 March 2016 at 04:57

      yea true but with Mustafina back, Russia has a good chance at medaling. Despite 4 falls, they barely finished out of the medals. For the olympics, not only will they (hopefully) not have that melt down but they will have Mustafina.

      Individual medal will be harder however with every event being fully stacked including AA. The place she can medal will probably be beam but with such horrid beam finals this entire cycle, every single athlete at EF finals has a legit chance at medaling as long as they stay on ad mustafina is inconsistent here.

      Only time will tell. We'll see her form once she competes (soon hopefully)

      Delete
  2. Anonymous30 March 2016 at 13:03

    Well well well today Valentina Rod told to RSport that Aliya will compete at Russian championships on beam and bars http://rsport.ru/artist_gym/20160330/908949636.html P.S. to be continued...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Head MAG Coach Alfosov on Russian gymnastics prospects in 2026

By
"A Really Good International Level": Alfosov on the Return of Russian Gymnasts, Belyavsky's Videos, and the Games Qualification Alfosov: Belyavsky's presence on the team was a big plus Interview by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya  Google translate Russian gymnasts competing under neutral status will be able to take their first step toward qualifying for the Los Angeles Olympics as early as October, Valery Alfosov, head coach of the Russian men's team, told RT. He believes that qualifying for not only the individual but also the team competition at the World Championships is one of the season's greatest achievements. He also explained the criteria he uses to compare his players with their competitors and described David Belyavsky's decision last year as hard-won. The current season began with good news for the gymnasts: almost all of the leading Russian team members are participating in international competitions. Does this mean the suspension situation is a thing of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who really won the WAG All Around?

By
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...
70 comments
Read more

Artistry versus acrobatics???

By
Watching videos of this weekend's competitions - the qualification and all around rounds of the Russian championships, medal winners from the American Cup - I am struck, more and more, by the huge difference between the American and Russian schools of gymnastics. It led me to ask the question : do artistry and acrobatics have to be mutually exclusive? (I am afraid that I think naming 'American' gymnastics a 'school' is perhaps lending an undeserved dignity to work which has become excessively obsessed with the difficult and the consistent, but I am using the word here so as not to label unfairly those individual gymnasts who are blameless in the direction of their training.) The FIG's vision for gymnastics is said to embrace more artistry; at least the publicity it has put about on the subject of its new Code makes that fairly plain.  So perhaps the Russians, with their inconsistent brilliance and superior body carriage (Mustafina, Komova, Grishina, Afanasy...
39 comments
Read more

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more