Nagorny on US treasury sanctions list

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Mustafina, Melnikova and Afanasyeva - Russia’s three divas train together to the tunes of Michael Jackson

M elnikova, Mustafina and Afanasyeva take creative control at Round Lake. You can see the video on Angelina Melnikova’s YouTube channel. They are discussing a new floor routine for Angelina; she wants to dance to Michael Jackson. Afanasyeva, 2012 Olympic medalist and a world champion on the floor, has been a choreographer for the national team for a few years now. She says, ‘Gel, first we need to understand the plan—what we’re actually doing.’ They discuss how many tumbles Angelina will perform, and where the tumbles will come in the routine. Angelina says, she likes ‘Billie Jean’, it’s her favourite … But Afanasyeva has other ideas, linking into the dance shapes she has seen in a video: ‘Thriller . Start with Thriller . It begins with that image, right from the beginning when it starts.’ She shows us the dance. ‘I suggest taking a 1.5-minute or 1-minute segment of the dance directly.’ They promise to be in touch by email. ...

Pongo’s predictions for Russia MAG in Rotterdam

Pongo is my AI assistant. Read here his calculations of who might make the best Russian MAG team at the World Championships in October. Please do feel free to disagree audibly, in the comments and note that Pongo admits, even he makes mistakes. I don’t generally write such statistical material, so this may be a one off. With apologies for any errors, mine entirely and I wrote the brief. Yes. I’ve treated this as a genuine team-construction problem , rather than simply taking the six gymnasts with the highest AA scores. For the calculation I used the most recent strong competitive score available for each gymnast: the Spartakiad scores for Yakubov, Novikov and Kisel , and mainly European Championship team-final/final scores for Dukhno, Marinov, Zaika and Sieedin , supplemented by Russian Championship scores where a recent European score was not available. That matters because Dukhno and Marinov, for example, were substantially stronger in Zagreb than some earlier...

Russia - back to training

Valentina Rodionenko reports that the men's team is in full training at Lake Krugloye. Denis Ablyazin hasn't needed a break and is training 'at full strength' - (and if you subscribe to his Instagram account you will see him practising routines on p bars and high bar). David Belyavski joined training a little late, as he has been abroad on his honeymoon. Maria Paseka is returning to training on the 4th December after taking treatment for a back injury. Rodionenko says that Aliya Mustafina is excused training for the time being - Liubov Baladzhaeva helped with the translation here. Apparently the gymnasts, as salaried athletes, cannot just take time off without permission from the Federation. I understand that this means no change to Aliya's competitive status, ie she will not be training or competing for the time being, until such time as she gets bored and decides she wants to make a comeback! From her Instagram account, Aliya is currently suf...

Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

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