Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Andrei Rodionenko today confirmed that Viktoria Komova will miss Russian nationals thanks to a leg injury which will need two to three weeks of therapy. The competition will follow exactly the same format as Europeans and the Olympics to support the gymnasts in their mental and physical preparation for the Games. Read the full article here . Good luck to all the girls, and wishing a rapid recovery to Viktoria Komova.

A revised roster for the women's competition at next week's Olympic test event is now available. Competing for Russia will be Moscow's Anastasia Grishina, who will turn 16 on the 16th January, and World Championships team member Yulia Inshina. This is a solid selection - neither gymnast has anything to lose, indeed Grishina can only gain from this new competitive experience and exposure.  Inshina's calm competitive attitude can only help her team mate along in what might be a daunting first senior competitive experience.  The 02 arena is huge, and far from my favourite venue for a gymnastics competition.  As a spectator I would go so far as to say it lacks intimacy and involvement; goodness knows what it is like for the gymnasts. We had hoped to see Anastasia Sidorova at this competition, but apparently her wrist injury (sustained during a biking accident last summer) is still causing her discomfort. Grishina has significant respect from Russian team coach Alexa...

First impressions, lasting impressions. The Tokyo World Championships were certainly a talking point this year. For me they were perhaps the most political championships we have experienced in some years. In this age of social media, talk was all important, and it began well before the competition started. I expect it will go on for some time to come. I will take a considered look at all the national level exchanges in due course, but in the meantime I wanted to record a few thoughts. And, lest we forget, put into relative permanence a few observations from the world of social media and broadcast about a controversial all around result. This World Championships was all about the power and precision of the American girls. They did dominate the team competition and were without question the best prepared team at this event. We also witnessed the continuing, rather surprising rise of a depleted yet determined Russian team. The developing discourse of the battle between the wom...

And finally, the judges did some judging. As a result, we have a world champion - Afanasyeva - who is worthy of the honoured title 'artistic gymnast'. At the end of the day, Afanasyeva won because the judges chose her routine as the best. At last, I like to think, artistry influenced the outcome. Only the judges could tell you, though, whether this was actually the case. The top 3 gymnasts all had the same difficulty value - 6.1. They all made errors and so all had deductions. It was very close indeed. Discussing artistry is difficult. It is a concept that is not easily articulated as it is largely intangible. It's also rather contingent on matters of taste. A shared understanding of the vocabulary would be a good starting point though. 'Choreography' as understood by many of us is a synonym for 'dance composition' and yet there is so much more to the art of choreography, including but not limited to ideas of balance, line, rhythm, amplitude....

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...

The Gymnastics Coaching blog tips Wieber for gold all around here, ahead of Komova. I prefer not to make predictions - who can say what might happen on the day - but in principle I tend to agree - at full strength Komova is the better gymnast, but I am guessing that she will be below strength on floor, bars and vault in Tokyo. I wonder what would happen though if Dementieva could hold her routines together in an all around final? As for the team competition, who knows?  These days so much depends on the gymnasts remaining healthy.  Which has become almost as much of a lottery as the 3-3 competition format which can see team rankings plummet thanks to a single bad luck event. At the end of the day, all that really matters is that the Russians qualify for the Olympics, but I know I won't feel this truth when we hit the thick of it.  I'm keeping my nails carefully filed over the coming weeks.

Viktoria Komova, Maria Paseka, Tatiana Solovyova and Maria Stepanova participated in this weekend's World Cup event in Ghent, a well attended competition with the exception of the USA and Romania.   The Russian men were represented by Andrei Cherkasov, Anton Golutsotskov and Dimitri Stolyarov. China really showed great promise here, winning four of the gold medals. Viktoria Komova performed excellently to win bars but suffered a fall on beam, ending in 5th place.  This was a useful warm up for Tokyo and, surprisingly, Viktoria's first international senior competition.  Elsewhere, Maria Paseka did not look quite repaired from her injury, struggling with her landings on floor and looking rather flat on vault.  Albert at the All Around Gymnastics news was present and did some fantastic quick hits (how does he manage to watch the routines, write down the skills and keep track of scores all at once?  Does he have an executive assistant?).  Elsewhere,...

As you may have read earlier, Russian team contenders Viktoria Komova and Maria Paseka are scheduled to compete at this World Cup competition over the weekend.   Their compatriots Maria Stepanova and Diana Sapranova are also on the roster. For Maria Paseka especially, this could be an important test for selection for the World Championships. I will be updating results early next week, but in the meantime Double Front has some information on the competition and there is a website here.

The Russian Cup finished on Sunday with the final day of apparatus finals.  In the women's competition, Komova, Dementieva, Afanasyeva and Belokobylskaya proved to be the most successful of those in contention for places on the national team for the World Championships in Tokyo this October.   In the men's competition, we saw a changing of the guard as Ablyazin, Ignatiev and Garibov began to prove their worth against the falling star of such gymnasts as Devyatovski.  The Russian Federation website carries full results of the men's competition , and the women's competition . The top three in each event, and some more detailed notes, are as follows. Women's Competition Vault  1.  Anna Pavlova          14.225 2.  Anna Dementieva    13.813 3.  Maria Paseka          13.713 4.  Tanya Nabieva       ...

Tess at the Russian Gymnastics Board has posted the top three in today's women's all around competition: 1      Anna Dementieva     59.8 2      Viktoria Komova     58.85 3      Yulia Belokobylskaya   - not sure of score but in the 57s. Someone has reported that Afanasyeva had a bad day, including two falls on bars :-(  Congratulations to Anna Dementieva and all the medallists!  I will post full results as soon as they become available.

Gymnastics No Ceiling has confirmed the full competitor list for this September's Ghent Challenger Cup (3-4 September).  Competing for Russia will be Viktoria Komova, Maria Paseka, Diana Sapronova and Maria Stepanova. Given Alexandrov's recent announcement that this event could be used as a minor selection, I find this rather interesting.  In my opinion, Komova's place on the team is probably fairly safe.  Paseka, Sapronova, Stepanova may be competing for a place on the team.  Paseka's strength is most definitely vault. That leg strapping looks quite heavy to me, but she looks fit and strong otherwise.  Stepanova took a bronze medal on floor at this spring's Russian national championships. At present, Komova and Sapronova are slated to compete bars and beam only, with Paseka and Stepanova appearing on floor and vault.  It's still early days, though ...