Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Tatiana Nabieva and Russian team choreographer Olga Burova. Here they are with a friend, practising for a caption competition for the RGF website. Advance entries at welcome at this website. The Russian Gymnastics Federation has now published full results of the Voronin Cup, including the senior and junior competitions (team, all around and individual apparatus) and all the judges' assignments.  Interesting to see Anastasia Sidorova take the highest floor score in the women's all around (14.75) and second on vault (14.6).  None of the Russian seniors barring Komova competed in apparatus finals, and all of them steered clear of vault final.  Vault appears to be a relative weakness for the Russian women, and I guess this apparatus may lose them the Olympic team title when considering the overwhelming reliability and power of the US women. Sidorova was the standout of the new generation (NB, in the absence of her close rival Anastasia Grishina who was home with fl...

First year senior Viktoria Komova dominated last week's Voronin Cup, taking gold in the all around, bars, beam and floor.  The competition was also noteable for the return of 2010 World All Around Champion Aliya Mustafina who performed convincingly on all four pieces of apparatus in the all around competition, and also secured a silver medal on asymmetric bars.  Mustafina, who suffered a torn ACL at this spring's European Championships, looked relatively fit and confident and gave notice here of her intention to return to full competitive fitness in time for next spring's Russian Championships.  Welcome back, Queen Aliya! A highly touted Olympic prospect, Anastasia Sidorova, who only becomes eligible for senior competition in January, took the silver medal on floor. In the men's competition, Andrei Cherkasov took gold in the all around, with Moscow's Denis Ablyazin showing strongly in the apparatus finals to take gold on floor (fantastic third tumble of 1.5 twis...