Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

   Olympic test event medallists on the uneven bars.   Anastasia Grishina (centre) gold, Youna Dufourney (France) silver, Jinnan Yao (China) bronze Picture : FIG/Volker Minkus At the end of the day, Russian Princess Anastasia Grishina won through with a splendid competitive performance on bars that fully deserved the gold medal.  It was great to hear the Russian national anthem played for the first time in the Olympic venue.  Let's hope it is prescient for many other airings during the summer.    New!  There is a very nice brief interview with Anastasia at the All Around blog. Full results of the test event FIG Youtube Channel including archived live coverage of all the finals and selected routine coverage from qualifications Piibunina's Youtube Channel including individual routine videos from the test event It wasn't an easy competition for the Russians, by far, this test event.  First time senior international, Anastasia Grishina...

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...

Full results for this competition can be found at the DTB Cup website and below, if you have a magnifying glass.  I promise, one day, to work out how to do screen captures better. Russia did rather well, taking both the men's and women's team titles.  In the all around, Yulia Inshina took the bronze medal, while Emin Garibov finished 5th for the men.  I like the new generation of Russian men who compete with great motivation, energy and lightness of foot.  The women's all around results linked to videos are also available at Full Twist . I'm delighted to see the Russian women's team do so well, even if things didn't go completely to plan ... very, very sorry that Aliya couldn't compete as expected - she did look upset - but some uncertainty is the nature of recovery from such a difficult injury and it's best to follow doctor's orders in order to be ready for the big fight in London next summer! All three team members - Polyan, Belokobylskay...