Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

International Gymnast carries as full a set of results from this competition as I can find anywhere, here .  The Couch Gymnast also has some links to videos. The Italians apparently performed excellently to beat out the Romanians, leaving the Russian team in 4th place.  The gap between Italy and Romania was but .4, driven principally by superior scores on vault and bars, and a true team challenge based on a very even performance by all gymnasts.  While the Italians managed to finish in 2nd, 3rd and 5th places overall, the Romanians had to rely on their top performer, Iordache, to carry them through - Gheorghe finished 11th and Badea a distant 18th.  I very much hope that both the Romanians and the Russians can raise themselves from this somewhat disappointing outcome to perform their best in the all around and apparatus finals.  The all around competition takes place today. This result changes the all around prospects quite significantly, with 2 Italians (F...

This young gymnast, born 8th August 1997, comes from the town of Alatir in the Chuvash Republic (capital: Cheboksary) and is coached by Ludmilla Marinova and Nadezhda Tikhonova.  She turns 15 in the Olympic year, and is a member of the Russian junior national squad (see this link for a full list and details) so all being well will be eligible to compete at world senior level from 2013. Shelgunova has been doing rather well recently, taking five golds at the recent Spartakiade competitions, and will be appearing at the Youth Olympics. The Russian Gymnastics Federation has provided a link to a 22nd July article from the Moscow special edition of Sovietski Sport with an interview with this young gymnast.  Even if you don't speak Russian, it's worth a look for the beautiful photograph!  There is also now an English language translation here . Evgeniya says her favourite gymnast is Aliya Mustafina, and she would like to win the world championships one day.  Her work...

You will be aware that this competition is underway at present in Trabzon, Turkey. Today is the women's team final - and yesterday we saw the Russian men successfully defend their gold!  Britain came a very close second.  Let's see how the all around final turns out. The official website has live updates of the results but as yet the start lists are a little confused so I won't speculate as to who is on the team.  You will be able to find TV coverage of the women's team final from 14.30 to 16.00 Istanbul time at this link .  I've been able to view programmes here on my little laptop so I would recommend you check the time in your own time zone and let's keep our fingers crossed for some good coverage.