Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

The Universiade event finals took place yesterday, with Japan's Yu Minobe taking two golds (bars and beam).  The Japanese women put on a strong showing here, taking a total of nine medals throughout all stages of the competition (seven in the event finals, team gold and silver in the all around (Yamagishi)). Russia showed their class on vault and floor, taking three medals in total.  Alena Polyan, who shone at this spring's Russian Championships, dominated floor, taking the top score on this event each day of the competition.  Along with her bronze all around and on beam, she has a good collection of medals from this event.  2010 European team champion Anna Myzdrikova took silver on vault. St Petersburg's Irina Sazonova performed pretty much as she did in qualifying on bars, finishing in sixth place, Ekaterina Skorodumova took a .6 penalty on floor to finish 6th there also.  Yulia Lozhecko was the only Russian woman not to qualify to any final. In the men's ...

Mikola Kuksenkov won a gold medal today in ShenZhen, taking the all around title ahead of Japan's Yamamoto.  Nathan Gafiuk (Canada) took the bronze medal.  Full results are available here . Russia's Pavel Russinyak finished 19th out of the 23 competitors.  His compatriot Ignatenkov finished last, but did not present a vault.

Full results (including individual scores) for this afternoon's team competition are available here . Japan have so far won both gold medals available in the gymnastics hall! 1   Japan     269.2 2   China     265.65 3   Romania 264.65 4   Canada   261.75 5   Ukraine  261.3 6th were France, 7th Korea, Russia a rather distant 8th following an absolute disaster on pommel horse, where their team total ranked 15th in the competition. The Japanese founded their win on a good consistent showing across apparatus, topped off by superior showings on floor and rings.  The Chinese men were outstanding on parallel bars and high bar, but couldn't maintain that standard elsewhere despite strong support from the home crowd.  The top five individuals are : 1    S Yamamoto    90.15 2    N Gafuik          89...

A link here to the full results of this competition held over last weekend. In summary, Nikita Ignatiev appears to be arguably the most successful gymnast at these games because in addition to his bronze all around he also managed gold on P-Bars and bronze on High Bar.  Hopefully this means a good future for this young gymnast.  Team mate Pavel Russinyak, in addition to his silver all around, also managed bronze on P-Bars and a silver on High Bar, while Devyatovski couldn't medal in either of his finals, again P-Bars and High Bar.  The Russian team is full of event specialists it seems, with all arounders rather thin on the ground. Results summarised below. Floor 1   Anton Lobachov            14.775 2   Andrei Cherkasov         14.775 3   Dmitri Gogotov              14.65 Pommels 1      ...