Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Lifje suggested that I post this video of Russian spins which she and Gymnasticsfan collaborated to produce. I love comparing the spins - see how quick and athletic Mustafina is ... how powerful and flexible Komova is, how languid and fluid Grishina is ...  Lifje comments that she likes how Mustafina's Memmel spin became so much tighter after her injury. So something good came out of that injury ... Aliya had time to improve on otherwise wonderful spins. Elsewhere, Andrei Rodionenko confirms that the Russian team are in Penza where they will train and compete for a place on the team. A little worrying that he mentions some team members have succumbed to a virus infection which is spreading through Lake Krugloye's air conditioning system. The article mentions eight members of each team competing, including Sidorova. I suspect this to be a journalistic error, but let's just wait and see now. Rodionenko says he will announce the five travelling members of the...

Three golds for Aliya Mustafina! What were the most noteable outcomes of the Pacific Rim and Russian National Championships? Mustafina likes the taste of gold She is back with that familiar mystical demeanour that makes her look every inch the champion.  Mustafina has a distance to travel with her difficulty (apart from bars, where she showed an SV of 7) but seemed confident and strong elsewhere at the Russian Championships.  Coach Alexander Alexandrov has emphasised that Mustafina and he have not even begun work on vault and floor.  Grishina is improving all the time Besides Mustafina's brilliant bar work, the routine of the Championships for me was Grishina's floor - elegant, musical and complex.  Grishina ended the competition with medals in every competition, including two golds, so with Mustafina and Afanasyeva she was a leading gymnast here. Afanasyeva has set the bar high With gold on beam and silver in the all around and floor competitions, 20...

Russian gymnastics fans the world over have been feverishly hitting their refresh buttons and praying that the live link will work.  It didn't always, largely because the weight of our collective enthusiasm overwhelmed the world wide web.  But I'm pleased to say, at the end of the day, our Queen Mustafina is back.  Clearly, the gymnastics presented today is work in progress.  We might never make true conclusions thanks to the grainy nature of the videos.  I'm risking putting the cart before the horse when I say that the USA and Russia are complete opposites when it comes to PR, the one (USA) all bluster and hype, the other (Russia) all mystery and understatement.  I'm sure that my friend, Mr Zaglada, will tell me that it's the results and the results alone that matter.    The only thing that will really count this year are those few days at the end of July. The absence of two of the leading contenders for this title, Viktoria Komova and Anna D...

I've loved this picture ever since I first saw it in the autumn of 2010 - it seems to me to say so much about Russian gymnastics. Flight, form, fluidity - power gymnastics with beauty.  This picture of 2010 World Champion, 2011 vice champion, Tatiana Nabieva, says it all. Good luck to all the Russian women as they approach the first important competition of the year!

The 7th Annual Penza International finished today with Viktoria Komova confirming her position as the brightest light in Russian gymnastics with two golds on bars and beam.  Tatiana Nabieva took gold on vault while veteran Ksenia Afanasyeva took gold on floor.  European champion Anna Dementyeva had a difficult competition this time round, missing out on medals completely, but Yulia Belokobylskaya showed how consistent she can be with even performances throughout the competition.  Full results are available here (in order of presentation, you will find men's and women's apparatus finals, junior women's finals and junior men's finals, in case you don't speak Russian). I'm guessing this was a hard competition for the girls, given its timing as they prepare for Tokyo, but then surely part of the point was to give them a test under stress and fatigue.  It remains difficult to predict who will be the final two members of the team for Tokyo.  I would suggest that Ta...

This competition included all gymnasts on the Russian training squad for the Tokyo World Championships as well as gymnasts from Ukraine and Kazakhstan.  It has been identified as one of the selection criteria for the final Russian team.  Apparatus finals take place tomorrow.  Full results are available here , and a link to a photo story with the main podiums here . Women's All Around In the official all around competition only two Russians competed: Komova and Afanasyeva.  Other Russians competed qualifications but their all around scores are calculated and shown out of sequence - ditto the men's competition. The  result shows Kononenko taking the bronze medal with a score of 54.125 which otherwise would have placed her behind Inshina in 6th place all around. 1    Viktoria Komova             58.35 2    Ksenia Afanasyeva       ...