Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

Maria Bondareva, courtesy of RGF Russia's charming young gymnasts, Maria Bondareva, Anastasia Dmitrieva, Polina Spirina and Ekaterina Sokova, knocked out the rest of the competition with their artistry in Montreal this weekend.  Bondareva and Dmitrieva shared the all around title.  The team beat Canada and Japan by a narrow margin.  These girls are not yet performing work of outstanding difficulty, but it is a pleasure to watch their gymnastics, particularly Bondareva on beam who has such confidence and authority.  You can find top five AA results below, full results are available at Gymnix International - team results link is not working properly at the moment but you may find them later.  There is a start list for today's event finals - Bondareva and Dmitrieva are qualified to vault, bars and beam, with Bondareva appearing on floor with Sokolova.  Good luck girls, and well done so far! There is a Youtube channel (thanks Lisa!) with good...

Maria Bondareva, Maria Nazarova, Kristina Levshina 12 year old Maria Bondareva proved herself once again in competition on Friday, taking the All Around gold in the Candidate Master of Sport category with a score of 56.867 including a 15.2 on beam.  Bondareva's nearest rivals were (second placed) Polina Spirina  (52.933), who turns 13 in April and comes from Novosibirsk; and bronze medallist Kristina Levshina (52.9), 13 years old, who trains alongside Ksenia Afanasyeva with coach Maria Nazarova in the town of Tula.  Full results are available here . National team member Polina Spirina, who first shone in the 2010 Olympic Hopefuls competition The Master of Sport category competition was won by Polina Fyodorova but with a score almost four points short of Bondareva's total (53.133).  Following on her heels were Yuna Nefedova (52.4) and Irina Yashina (51.533) The junior competitions this year are marked by the absence of key team members who have until very re...

Don't forget to keep checking back to I-G TV to see the latest developments.  I know there have been a few technical issues with the site, but there is a rather intriguing section, ' IG competitions ' which gives a chance to see some of the Russian juniors in action, in particular from the team of Novosibirsk, including the very promising Polina Spirina.  I've yet to work out fully how the voting on these videos works, but I like a bit of mystery.  And it's great to see some of the new up and coming names at work. 

I'm just collating the voluminous amounts of results and video links relating to the Russian Federal Championships, though I'm afraid my progress is rather slow thanks to the recent adoption of two adorable black and white cats, Harry and Ron, who are of course my priority at the moment, alongside large volumes of assessment I must complete as part of my 'proper' job!  However, to keep you interested, here are some links I located via the Russian Gymnastics Federation website .  First of all, an interview (from 2007) with 13 time Olympic medalist and long-serving member of the Men's Technical Committee, Boris Shakhlin (RIP).  Boris reflects on the relative increasing difficulty levels in gymnastics (he competed at Olympics in 1956, 1960 and 1964), on the rewards accorded to sportsmen in his time, and on his premature retirement from sport, brought on by a heart attack at the age of 35 as he prepared for the 1968 Olympics.  When asked to rank the best gymnasts of ...

I promised last year to update the site with some results from this competition. Especially interesting now as we have seen the inclusion of some of these gymnasts (Polina Spirina, Olga Valekzhanina in particular) in the national squad listing. Names which crop up here repeatedly include Polina Spirina, Dariya Mikhailova, Olga Valekzhanina, Yulia Biriyulia. Remember these names, or write them in a notebook somewhere - born in 1999, they won't become eligible for senior international competition until 2015, assuming they hold their interest and avoid injury. I don't understand the format of the all around competition; I wonder if anyone knows, and could add an explanatory comment? A virtual box of chocolates to you, if so. The composite score used to determine ranking seems to be made up of an execution score and a full all around score. I'm therefore recording these results as a composite score, with the all around figure in brackets afterwards. The original, full...